Trapped - like Jonah in the belly of the fish

Photo by A Whistling Train

As noted in an earlier post, this week's first reading at Sunday Mass is from the Book of the Prophet Jonah. I've already encouraged you to read the whole book (a brief 4 chapters, right here - won't take you more than ten minutes) and at least one reader has reported in to say that he did just that.

The portion of Jonah we'll hear this weekend begins after the prophet's three-day stay in the belly of the great fish. This poem by May Sarton offers us Jonah's memory of his "prisoning" and his deliverance. If you click on the link for the photo above you'll see two more photos of this carving of Jonah. On his site, the photographer includes the Canticle of Jonah which I have appended below.
Jonah

I came back from the belly of the whale
Bruised from the struggle with a living wall
Drowning in a breathing dark, a huge heartbeat
That jolted helpless hands and useless feet.

Yet know it was not death, that vital warm
Nor did the monster wish me any harm
Only the prisoning was hard to bear
And three weeks’ need to burst back into air…

Slowly the drowned self must be strangled free
And lifted whole out of that inmost sea
To lie newborn under compassionate sky
As fragile as a babe, with circling eye.

Do not be anxious, for all is well
The sojourn over in that fluid Hell
My heart is nourished on no more than air
Since every breath I draw is answered prayer.

- May Sarton


The Canticle of Jonah

In my distress, I cried out to the Lord,
and he answered me;
from the belly of the grave, I cried out,
and you have heard my voice!

You have thrown me into the depths,
into the heart of the sea,
and the waves rushed in on me from all sides.

All your surge and swell have overwhelmed me.
And I, I kept saying:
I have been rejected from your presence;
how will I ever gaze on your temple again?

The waters closed in about me;
the depths swallowed me up!
Seaweed entwined itself around my head.
There, where the mountains begin to grow,
I went down into the world beneath,
to people who once existed.

But you made my soul rise up from the deep, O Lord, my God!
When I felt my strength failing,
I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer reached you, in your holy temple.

Those who serve nothingness
have abandoned their true loyalty.

As for me, I will offer sacrifice to you to the tune of praise.
The vow I made, I will keep.

All help that saves comes forth from the Lord!

-Jonah, 2:3-10
Jonah reference

-ConcordPastor

Word for the Weekend - January 25

Image by Eugene Abeshaus at Judaism.com

This weekend includes the only Sunday in the three-year lectionary when we hear from the Book of Jonah. The whole Book of Jonah is but 4 very brief chapters and I'd urge you to skip over here and read it through - won't take you more than 10 minutes. (After reading the brief and helpful introduction, click on "next chapter.")

This passage in question begins after the great fish tale and finds Jonah already freed from the belly of the sea beast and about to call Nineveh to repentance. (That's why I chose and love the graphic above.) This sets us up for the same call in the gospel for the day which also includes the call of some of the apostles.

We'll be celebrating the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (unless your parish is observing the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul - an option in this year declared Pauline by the pope.) Our usual reference site at St. Louis University also chooses the day's given texts for study. You can find the scripture readings and background materials here and helpful hints to prepare children to hear the Word this Sunday here.

Now, set aside some time and ponder those scriptures!
Jonah reference
-ConcordPastor

Word for the Weekend: January 25

Art by Eugene Abeshaus at Judaism.com

This weekend includes the only Sunday in the three-year lectionary when we hear from the Book of Jonah. The whole Book of Jonah is but 4 very brief chapters and I'd urge you to skip over here and read it through - won't take you more than 10 minutes. (After reading the brief and helpful introduction, click on "next chapter.")

This passage in question begins after the great fish tale and finds Jonah already freed from the belly of the sea beast and about to call Nineveh to repentance. (That's why I chose and love the graphic above.) This sets us up for the same call in the gospel for the day which also includes the call of some of the apostles.

We'll be celebrating the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.  For the readings and brief commentary on them, check here.  And if you're bringing children to Mass with you, you'll find tips here to help our young ones prepare to understand the day's scriptures.

Jonah reference
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Homily: Third Sunday, Ordinary Time - Jan 25

Image: The Fishers of Men Ministry

 
Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
1 Corinthians7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

At first glance, the way Simon, Andrew, James and John
respond to Jesus’ call may seem extraordinary:
they drop everything and head off in a new direction.
If that’s proposed to us as an example for how we might live,
it may seem impractical, impossible.

But what’s really happening here is something we all experience
when there’s a change the “ordering principle” of our lives,
a change in whatever or, more importantly, whomever
is at the center of our existence.

If you think you’ve not experienced this,
then remember the first time you fell in love
and how that one other person began to occupy
your heart, your mind, your dreams, your hopes, your plans.

Remember how the ordering principle of your life changed
when you got engaged to be married.

Remember how your world was reordered
when you learned that you were expecting a child.

Remember how the universe was never the same again
after you lost someone you deeply loved.

Think of how your work, your job,
can be the ordering principle in your life
and how that’s all thrown off kilter when you lose your job.

And who doesn’t realize in these unstable economic times
how easily our finances become the ordering principle in our lives.

Perhaps this gospel story tells it just as it happened:
Jesus walks by, says, “Come, follow me,” and off the fishermen go.

Or perhaps it’s more like a posed snapshot
intended to sum up a larger story.
Think of a photo of a newly married couple,
holding their hands forward
and looking together at their wedding rings.
The picture tells a story but it shows us only a moment
in a relationship that has been years in the making,
a relationship that will reorder the couple’s lives
until death parts them.

Whether it's "love at first sight"
or a relationship that grows day by day over years,
the love at the center of our hearts orders our lives.

For us to give serious consideration to this gospel story
we’ll need to spend some time discerning what is presently
the ordering principle in our lives.
(This is a good question for anyone to ask
and it certainly is a question for believers.)

Sometimes we may presume that the love we're pledged to
is the one that orders our lives
but there are many times when other realities
hedge the one we may name as most important.

For a pastor like me,
Christ should be the center, the ordering principle, of my life.
But what if my work, even my work for Christ, consumes me -
such that there’s little or no time left for my prayer life,
no time left for me to spend quietly with Jesus…

Certainly the same can be said of the married person
consumed by work – work to support a beloved family.
But if that work is consuming to the degree
that one has little time left to spend with the family...

Well, you see how it can go...

Perhaps the key to our understanding this gospel passage
would be for us to ask ourselves the question:
For whom is my heart’s deepest desire?
For whom will I drop everything else
and leave behind even critically important realities
in faithfulness to the one who is the heart of my heart?
What is so precious to me that I would let go everything
in favor of such a beloved?

On a wedding day, on an ordination day,
these answers may come quickly and easily.
As time goes by, the answers may change
and the questions may be harder to answer.

St. Paul called us today to reexamine everything in our lives:
our loves, our marriages,
the tears of our griefs, the laughter of our joy,
and everything we have and possess and use
and to know, to understand that all this will pass away -
and all that will remain will be the love of God for us.

Make no mistake about it:
the Lord asks to be the One
for whom we would put everything else aside.
But, as with Jonah, the reluctant prophet,
so is the Lord with us.
He continues to call us to lay aside what we’re doing,
to abandon the nets that entangle our priorities,
and to follow him, to be with him,
to spend our lives with him and for him.

We gather each week in the shadow of the cross of Jesus,
the great sign that reminds us that he let go,
laid down everything for us
- for he loved us more than life itself.

At this table every week he invites us, he calls us again and again
to be filled with his life in the bread and cup of the Eucharist
and to follow him along the path of our hearts’ desire.

Listen for his voice:
as he called Peter, Andrew, James and John,
so he calls each of us by name: “Come, follow me…”
Jonah reference
-ConcordPastor

Fishing in the waters of faith

,

Go ahead!

Click your cursor a few times in the water and watch the fish come and gobble up their lunch!

There are fish in this weekend's gospel - and fishermen, too. But at just a word from Jesus they abandon their cursors their nets and begin to follow him.

Can you move your cursor down here and click on this link to the weekend's scriptures and some interesting commentary on them?  And if some children are fishing with you, click here for some hints on helping them prepare to hear the Lord's Word when they come to Mass.

The first scripture tells part of Jonah's story - he of the really big fish who swallowed him whole!  And in the second scripture for the day, St. Paul gives a very brief but important warning: "Time is running out!"

The fish swimming at the top of the post will be here when you get back from the two links and they'll be just as hungry.  So take some time to read and ponder Sunday's readings - it's a great way to prepare now to worship on the Lord's Day.

And remember: whatever you do with your nets, the Lord has cast his line and hopes to catch you!


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