Monday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 14, 2024

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.”

According to the Greek text of Matthew 12, 40, the Lord spoke of Jonah as being swallowed by a “huge fish” or “sea monster” for three days, and it is easy to see this as a sign of the Lord’s three days in the tomb before he rose.  Indeed, St. Matthew quotes him as making this connection himself.  St. Mark leaves this out of his account in order to focus on what Jesus says about Jonah as a sign to the people of pagan Nineveh, who had no way of knowing about his time in the fish.  The sign to the Ninevites was that of a foreigner who dared to stand in the streets of their proud city and call upon them to repent or face disaster.  And while the Israelites had a long history of prophets doing much the same thing, this was completely new to the Ninevites.  And, as learn from the Book of Jonah, the king ordered his people to do severe penance so that God might have mercy.

The Lord Jesus points to this sign as the answer to the request of the Pharisees for a sign.  He points to the past to explain the present.  A man, the Incarnate Son,  sent by God the Father from his own country, heaven, to earth in order to preach repentance for sin.  Jesus himself is no sign — he is the reality which the signs of the Old Testament pointed to: “There is something greater than Jonah here.”

Jesus says that an “evil generation” seeks a sign.  It seeks a sign because a sign means the reality has not yet arrived and so there is still more time for sin.  We are living in that “evil generation” even now, the generation that began with the coming of the Lord in the flesh and which will end only when he comes again.  

Let us ever keep before us the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ, who handed himself over to death to save us, fulfilling the sign of Jonah, who allowed himself to be thrown overboard to save the sailors on the boat carrying him across the stormy sea.