REFLECTION
[For the Epistle]The Church's intention in this day's lesson is to encourage us to earnestness and perseverance in our penance. Here we have an idolatrous city, a haughty and debauched capital, whose crimes have merited the anger of Heaven. God threatens it with His vengeance: yet forty days, and Ninive and its inhabitantsshall be destroyed. How came it, that the threat was not carried into effect? What was it taht caused Ninive to be spared? It's people returned to the God they had left; they sued for mercy; they humbled themselves, and fasted; and the Church concludes the prophet's account by these touching words of her own: 'And the Lord our God had mercy on His people. They are Gentiles, but they became His people, because they did penance at the preaching of the prophet. God had made a covenant with one only nation, the Jews; but He rejected, not the Gentiles as often as they renounced their false gods, confessed His holy name and desired to serve Him. We are here taught the efficacy of corporal mortification; when united with spiritual penance, that is, with the repentance of the heart, it has power to appease God's anger. How highly then, should we prize the holy exercises of penance, put upon us by the Church during this holy season! Let us also learn to dread taht false spirituality, which tells us that exterior mortification is of little value: such doctrine is the result of rationalism and cowardice.
This passage from the prophet Jonas is also intended for the catechumens, whose Baptism is so close at hand. It teaches them to have confidence in this merciful God of the Christians, whose threats are so terrible, but who, not withstanding, turns from His threats to forgive the repentant sinner. These catechumens, who had hitherto lived in the Ninive of paganism, were here taught that God, even before sending His Son into the world, invited all men to become His people. Seeing the immense obstacles their Gentile ancestors had to surmount in order to receive and persevere in the grace offered them, they would bless God their Savior for having, by His Incarnation, His Sacrifice, His Sacraments, and His Church, facilitated salvation for us who live under the new Testament. True, He was the source of salvation to all preceding generations: but with what incomparable richness is He the source of ours! The public penitents, too, had their instruction in this Epistle. What an encouragement for them to hope for pardon! God has shown pardon to Ninive, sinful as it was, and sentenced to destruction: He would, therefore, accept their repance and penance, He would stay His justice, and show them mercy and pardon. (volume 6, pages 122-123)
[For the Gospel] The enemies of Jesus sought to stone Him to death, as we were told in yesterday's Gospel; today they are bent on making Him a prisoner, and send soldiers to seize Him. This time Jesus does not hide Himself; but how awful are the words He speaks: "I go to Him that sent Me: you shall seek Me, and shall not find Me!" The sinner, then, who has long abused the grace of God, may have his ingratitude and contempt punished in this just, but terrific way - that he shall not be able to find the Jesus he has despised: "he shall seek, and shall not find." Antiochus, when humbled under the hand of God, prayed, yet obtained not mercy (2 Maccabees ix: 13). After the death and resurrection of Jesus, whilst the Church was casting her roots in the world, the Jews, who had crucified the just One, were seeking the Messias in each of the many imposters, who were then rising up in Judea, and fomenting rebellions, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem. Surrounded on all sides by the Roman legions, with their temple and palaces a prey to flames, they sent up their cries to Heaven and besought the God of their fathers to send, as He had promised, the Deliverer! It never occurred to them that this Deliverer had shown Himself to their fathers, to many even of themselves; that they had put Him to death, and that the apostles had already carried His name to the ends of the earth. They went on looking for Him, even to the very day when the deicide city fell, burying beneath its ruins them that the sword had spared. Had they been asked what it was they were awaiting, they would have replied that they were expecting their Messias! He had come, and gone. "You shall seek Me, and shall not find Me!" Let those, too, think of those terrible words of Jesus, who intend to neglect the graces offered to them during this Easter. Let us pray, let us make intercession for them, lest they fall into that awful threat, of a repentance that seeks mercy when it is too late to find aught save an inexorable justice.
But what consoling thoughts are suggested by the concluding words of our Gospel! Faithful souls, and you that have repented! listen to what your Jesus says, for it is to you that He speaks: "If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink." Remember the prayer of the Samaritan woman: Give me, O Lord, to drink of this water! This water is divine grace: come and drink your fill at the fountains of your Savior, as the prophet Isaias bids you (Isaias xii: 3). This water gives purity to the souls that are defiled, strength to them that are weak, and love to them that have no fervor. Nay, our Savior assures us that he who believes in Him shall himself become a fountain of liveing water, for the Holy Ghost will come upon him, and he shall pour out upon others of the fulness that he himself has received. With what joy must the catechumen have listened to these words, which promised him that his thirst should soon be quenched at the holy font! Jesus has made Himself everything to the world He has come to save: Light to guide us, Bread to nourish us, a Vine to gladden our hearts with its fruit, and, lastly, a Fountain of living water to quench our thirst. (volume 6, pages 124-26)
http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/14Lent/lent2014.htm#apr7
No comments:
Post a Comment