Wednesday in the First Week of Lent, March 1, 2023

Luke 11, 29-32

While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.”

The Church has emphasized to us, through the Readings of the first weekdays of the first week of Lent, the necessity for almsgiving and prayer.  Today’s readings underline fasting.  In the reading from the Book of the Prophet Jonah, the Prophet goes to the people of the pagan capital of the Assyrian Empire and preached repentance.  His message causes great consternation as God threatens to overthrow the city and destroy its inhabitants: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”  The citizens of the city, led by their king, took the message to heart and commenced a great fast.  To us, Jonah’s message is slender, but the Assyrians were moved by it.  It is quite an extraordinary thing: a stranger who does not speak their language comes among them with a vague message of impending destruction.  The citizens are alarmed and the king, taking this threat very seriously, orders the fast.

But why a fast?  People of the Ancient Near East fasted often: before great feasts, during times of mourning, and in fulfillment of a vow.  It was a powerful sign of preparation or of separation.  Just as important, fasting affected the person who practiced it: it physically cleansed a person of poisons and reduced the person interiorly to a humble state.  Further, a religious fast meant leaving off from any activities which would have aroused the anger of God.  For the Assyrians and others, the notion of fasting to appease divine anger came naturally.  

The Lord Jesus compares the Assyrians of a few hundred years before with the Jews of his own day.  He points out that the Assyrians repented and fasted at the message of a foreigner but the Jews did not repent and fast at the message of repentance that he himself, a fellow Jew, brought.  Further, Jonah performed no miracles to validate his warning whereas Jesus had performed many.  

The heart of the Lord’s teaching here is this: “Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.”  That is, as Jonah was indeed a stranger to the Assyrians, but one who spoke the truth, so the Lord would be treated as a stranger by his own people, though he spoke the truth to them.  We should note that when the Lord uses the word “generation”, he is speaking of the generation, the age, that began at the time of his Incarnation and will continue until he returns in glory.  The Son of God put aside his splendor, took on human flesh, and lived among us, and despite his teaching and his wondrous miracles, “his own received him not” (John 1, 11).  His message of repentance goes largely unheeded these days.  He is a sign that is ignored or even held in contempt.  Instead of fasting, we consume as much as we can as fast as we can.  And so it is proper for us to fast, to counter the insidious effects of the gluttony, greed, and lust of others on us that threaten to pull us under too, to restore our sanity so that we know ourselves to be totally dependent on God for everything we need in order to live, and to prepare ourselves for the great and true feast of heaven.  Through lifestyles which contrast sharply with those of the pagans around us we become signs of the passing nature of this life and of the abundance in the life to come.