Thursday, April 28, 2016
Jonah, Chapter 1, Verse 5
5 Then the sailors were afraid and each one cried to his god. To
lighten the ship for themselves, they threw its cargo into the sea. Meanwhile,
Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship, and lay there fast asleep.
According to bible-study-for-everyone.com[1]:
Christians regard the prophet Jonah as a type foreshadowing Jesus. Jesus
said that he did not come for the healthy but for the sick. The healthy are
well and they know it. So, they have no need of a doctor. But the sick may be
diseased and not know it. They require someone to diagnose their sickness and
prescribe the remedy. They need a healer. People can be sick physically. And
they can be sick mentally, spiritually, emotionally. For instance, the physical
ailment of blindness is plain because the person cannot see. But there is also
the blindness of selfishness. People can be blind in many ways. A person can be
blind to themselves. They see with their eyes but they do not understand what
they see. Or they can be blind as to their experience. They interact with their
world and with other people but remain isolated and lonely because they cannot
see the depth and love within their relationships. Or they have very deep
emotional or mental feelings but they do not see (understand) from where the
feelings came. They do not know what the feelings indicate. They are in the
dark as to any remedy. Jesus came in order for us to understand, to see and
gain a remedy. He came as the source of knowledge, as light in darkness and as
the cure for our illness. Those in light do not need a lamp but those in
darkness need the light. Jesus was sent as the light that shines in the
darkness. From the beginning to the end of the bible the theme is repeated.
Humankind is lost due to deafness, blindness, ignorance, stupidity, arrogance,
selfishness and greed. That is the first act of the play. The second act is God
seeking and searching for lost humankind, looking for them in the various
places of their fear, the haunts of
darkness, the hiding places of those who are afraid of God. The final act is
played out in the response of each individual and society, each nation and
epoch of human history.
Will man and God be enemies or friends? Will God win and regain the trust
and fidelity of his creation? Or will humankind forever remain estranged? Will
the people always wander outside in the desolation or will they be admitted
once again into the intimacy of the Garden of Paradise?
Christ proposed as the
distinctive sign of his disciples the law of love and the gift of self for
others (cf. Mt 22:39; Jn 13:34). Against this backdrop of love so
central to the Christian experience of marriage and the family, another virtue
stands out, one often overlooked in our world of frenzied and superficial
relationships. It is tenderness. The word of God tells us that the family is
entrusted to a man, a woman and their children, so that they may become a
communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit. The family is called to join in daily prayer, to read the word of
God and to share in Eucharistic communion, and thus to grow in love and become
ever more fully a temple in which the Spirit dwells. Every family should look
to the icon of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Like Mary, we are asked to face our family’s
challenges with courage and serenity, in good times and bad, and to keep in our hearts the great things which God
has done (cf. Lk 2:19, 51). An
excellent program that is modeled on the Holy Family is available on line. (http://thechoicewine.org/)
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