According to the commentary in the Catholic New American Bible, the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament is a parable written sometime after the return of the Jewish people from exile. It is principally a story about the recalcitrance of a curmudgeonly prophet who had a hard time accepting God’s instructions. However, it is also a story about a wicked city that miraculously sees the light, reforms, and avoids the divine wrath.
God instructs Jonah “to set out for the great city of Nineveh (modern-day Mosul) and preach against it; for their wickedness has come before me” (Jon. 1:2). Disobediently, Jonah sails off in the opposite direction, and is tossed overboard by the god-fearing mariners, and finds himself in the belly of a large fish which brings him back to his starting point. Reluctantly, he goes to Nineveh to preach his message of doom. To his astonishment, the Ninevites – from the king to the lowliest subject – immediately heed his warning and repent in sackcloth and ashes. Wickedness is the continuous sin of ignoring the ways of God. Its consequence is destruction. Its remedy is repentance. Repentance leads to the restoration of God’s favor.
Other cities referenced in scripture spring to mind. Consider Sodom and Gomorrah and their fiery fate. In the New Testament Jesus himself proclaims about two cities that had rejected his message: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (Mt. 11:20).
Maybe it is the overexposure to the news media that leads one to imagine dissolution is ascendant in the world. Cities are marked by the breakdown of order. Universities drift into meaninglessness as they untether themselves from Truth. Families, the bedrock of civilization, either fail or are never formed. Ugliness in all forms is commonplace. The triumvirate of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness appears to be in retreat. The lines from Yeats a century ago seem even more prescient: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. Nevertheless, the approaching perennial confluence of Thanksgiving and Advent is an antidote to these depressing revelations. The one reminds us to be grateful, the other to be hopeful.
Our hope is not misplaced. Students of American history are aware of the four Great Awakenings that occurred here between the years 1730 and 1970. Why shouldn’t something comparable happen again? Wouldn’t one be in line with the ‘new springtime’ Pope John Paul II predicted? Could not a mass metanoia be possible, a collective change of heart? Do we think the Holy Spirit is incapable of such guidance?
The grants distributed from the donor-advised funds at the National Catholic Community Foundation support activities that fall within the broad parameters of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy defined by the Church. One of the spiritual works is especially critical today: instructing the ignorant. As jarring as this phrase is, it essentially means spreading the good news of the Gospel, news predicated first on reverence for God and then love of neighbor. Once it enlightens today’s hearts – so hardened by the ignorance of nihilism – this ‘instruction’ nourishes the innate seeds of hope within all of us. Hope leads to faith and faith to charity. The three lead us to God. Perhaps our donors, like the irascible Jonah, are helping lay the groundwork for a new awakening?
Since our expulsion from that Edenic garden, some of our cultures saw the light, some refused to. The ones who were ‘illuminated’ have participated in the advance of the Kingdom. Our opportunity awaits.