Today's Gospel Reflection

"Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish, far from the Lord"

Like all prophets, Jonah's mission is to communicate to the people the words that God asks of him. At the moment the first reading tells us, he is given a difficult mission. He asks him to go to Nineveh "because their wickedness has reached me" so that they change their behavior. Jonah knows well that what God asks of him is something complicated and difficult for the inhabitants of Nineveh to accept. And instead of accepting God's request, what he does is to flee far away from him and from Nineveh. Embarking on a ship bound for Tarshish, he seeks to be far away from God and not to hear him.

But from what follows, we can draw an interesting lesson. If the Lord is determined, there is no way to flee from him. Going beyond what happened in the boat where Jonah flees, in the end he will end up in Nineveh and preach what his Lord commands him, because he does not leave him alone with his strength. He will always accompany him so that he may fulfill the mission that he entrusts to him.

From this personal story of Jonah we can draw a universal teaching. If the Lord asks anything of any of his followers, he will give him the necessary strength to carry it out. The Lord never asks the impossible of us. Knowing also that he will always ask us something convenient for our personal story and the extension of the gospel.

"Go, do likewise."

We see how Jesus' contemporaries, at times, ask him questions. Some with good intentions to know his clarifying answer, and others, as in the case of the learned man in today's Gospel, to test him. For one or the other, Jesus finds the adequate and exact answer, we could say, the evangelical answer.

The lawyer's question is about eternal life, about happiness, something to which we all aspire and which touches our whole existence. His own answer, based on the law, is very clear: Love God, love your neighbor and love yourself. Jesus approves this answer: "Well said. Do this and you will have life.

We do not know if the lawyer did not know very well who his neighbor was or simply to "appear to be just", he asks Jesus again: "And who is my neighbor? Jesus' answer is the parable of the Good Samaritan, where it is clear who the neighbor is.

From the beginning, and after XXI centuries of Christianity, we know well that love is the most important attitude of every follower of Jesus towards every person, who is his neighbor and also his brother. On the theoretical level we have it clear. It is on the level of our works where we find the difficulties to live always with love and from love.

We can take advantage of today's Gospel passage to ask the Lord once again to help us, to enter into our heart and to reign in it, so that all our actions may spring from love and tend to love. Every human being, especially the needy, is our neighbor whom we must always love. 

By Friar Manuel Santos Sánchez O.P.