Jonah, the prophet:
Mirror of Our Flights
There are particular moments when it becomes urgent to re-envision our life and mission — for instance, at the beginning of a new pastoral year. The figure of Jonah could offer a good starting point… It may seem somewhat strange to present this prophet as a “model”, given his reluctance to set out in obedience to the Word of God. Yet is Jonah not precisely the mirror of our resistances and our flights? (Jonah, chapters 1–4).
“There is a season for everything, a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what has been planted” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Although there is a time for everything, the time to begin again, to relaunch life, is of vital importance.
Take, for example, the month of October, when we return to our tasks and responsibilities after the summer holidays. With autumn, life resumes its rhythm. We begin a new academic, pastoral, or professional year… It is time to set out once more, to re-envision the path of our life and mission. Existence involves a continual beginning-again — not because we are condemned to repeat the past, but because we are graced with a new opportunity for the future.
What feelings stir within us at the beginning of a new year?
October is also the Month of Mission, with the celebration of World Mission Sunday on the penultimate Sunday of the month. It is a fitting occasion to reflect upon our missionary vocation as those who are sent — an invitation to set out!…
In this light, I propose we meditate on the figure of Jonah, a prophet invited to rise and embark on a long journey. It may appear strange to present him as an example, given his reluctance and resistance to obey God’s Word.
But is Jonah not, in truth, the mirror of ourselves?
Setting Out to Flee
The vocation of Jonah is recounted in the short book that bears his name — one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. A singular work, narrative in form — a midrash, that is, an exemplary story. Its message stands as one of the peaks of the First Testament, a foreshadowing of the message of Jesus: the merciful Father who desires to save all.
The story is well known. The prophet Jonah (his name means “dove”!) receives from God a mission order: “Rise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.” The biblical text says that Jonah set out — but in the opposite direction — to flee from the Lord. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for Tarshish; he paid his fare and went on board. Once aboard, he took refuge in the ship’s hold and fell into a deep sleep.
Instead of going eastwards towards Nineveh — the Assyrian capital and historic enemy of his people, Israel — he fled far away. The “dove” refused to carry the message. In fact, Tarshish lay somewhere to the west, perhaps in Italy (some even suggest Gibraltar!) — in other words, at the very opposite end from where he should have gone. Far from Nineveh and its people, far from God and from his uncomfortable mission.
How often do we, too, flee our responsibilities, choosing a life that avoids sacrifice and the cross — taking refuge instead in comfort and ease, far from struggle and commitment?
Jonah, a missionary on the run, mirrors so many of our false departures — our flights from duty, from mission.
Where am I heading? Towards Nineveh or Tarshish?
Without responsibility (that is, readiness to respond), we do not grow — we remain eternally childish. This is, perhaps, one of the great ills that afflict society today!…
To Withdraw or to Draw Near
Jonah’s religious mindset is one of distance-keeping! He withdraws from Nineveh because its inhabitants are pagans and enemies — “outsiders” who, in his view, should remain so. Jonah also distances himself from God because he does not share God’s attitude of compassion and closeness toward Nineveh. Jonah sets out, but in order to withdraw — to reaffirm his distance!
On 10 October we celebrate Saint Daniel Comboni, apostle of Africa. His feast offers us an example of a good departure. Convinced that he is sent to Africa, he struggles to overcome every obstacle that arises to prevent him from going. When the failure of the first expedition leads many to abandon the enterprise, he does not lose heart but presses on: “If the Pope, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and all the bishops of the world are against me, I will bow my head for a year, and then present a new plan; but to give up thinking of Africa — never, never!”
His is a missionary spirituality of closeness! He leaves his homeland, his family, and all that is familiar to become “neighbour” to those who are far away. He journeys to the world’s peripheries, to distant and unknown lands and peoples, to draw near to the far-off. And thus he draws near to the Heart of God.
And mine — is it a missionary spirituality of closeness, or a religiosity of alienation that digs distances and trenches between myself and others, between my heart and the Heart of God?
The God of a Thousand Ambushes
In response to the “mission order”, Jonah is silent and flees. God, too, is silent — but sets off in pursuit. The Lord is “the God of a thousand ambushes”, as one Italian theologian puts it (cf. Amos 5:18-19). He precedes us even on the paths that lead away from him, weaving “traps” so that we may fall into his embrace.
God sends his first messenger: the wind, which raises such a storm that the ship threatens to break apart. This messenger converts the passengers, who all begin to pray. All — except Jonah. It is the captain himself who finds him, hidden in the darkness of the hold, fast asleep, alienated from the anxiety and toil of those around him. He shakes him violently: “Sleeper! What are you doing here? Get up and call upon your God!…”
The strange lethargic sleep of Jonah reveals his attempt to silence his conscience! It is not the serene sleep of Jesus, resting at the prow of Peter’s boat amid the storm on the Sea of Galilee. A lethargy not unknown to us! We too have our refuges — places where we distract ourselves and shut our eyes to painful reality, vainly trying to ignore the call to responsibility.
A subterfuge, indeed, that goes back to ancient times — to Adam and Eve, who hid from the gaze of God after their disobedience. Yet no place can hide us from God’s face. As Psalm 139 so beautifully says: “Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I climb to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn and dwell at the ends of the sea, even there your hand shall guide me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and night be the light about me’ — even darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day.”
The passengers of the storm-tossed ship decide to discover whose fault it is by casting lots — and the lot falls upon Jonah! This is the second messenger, through whom God’s long arm reaches his prophet to call him to responsibility. Caught in the act, Jonah admits his guilt and tells his shipmates to throw him into the sea. Was it a supreme act of abandonment into God’s hands? Perhaps, yet all seems rather an ultimate, desperate gesture born of remorse.
“God does not will the death of the sinner, but that he turn from his ways and live,” says the prophet Ezekiel (33:11). God sends a third messenger to rescue his prophet — “a great fish”. Jonah remains in its belly for three days and three nights. It is a paschal experience, one that converts Jonah’s heart and finally brings him to prayer. From the depths of the fish he raises a heartfelt and profound prayer to God. “Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land!”
Popular imagination supposes it was a whale. A Jewish tradition says that the whale’s two eyes were like two windows through which Jonah could see the world outside. Now, since the whale’s eyes are set on either side, each gives a different view — one to the left, one to the right. From these two perspectives Jonah is forced to contemplate reality in double vision: his own, turned westward towards Tarshish; and God’s, turned eastward towards Nineveh. And in the end, God’s vision prevails.
How many times has it happened to us too — to be forced to “enter within ourselves”, to face our reality, and to pray precisely at the moment of affliction, when we find ourselves in the belly of the whale?
The Prophet on the Hill
Jonah is sent a second time: “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” This time Jonah obeys — whether willingly or not. He begins to cross the city (it took three days to walk through it!) preaching: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”
Once his mission is completed, the “dove” Jonah withdraws to a hill outside the city to see what will happen. Here we see that his “closeness” to this people is only physical and momentary — it does not reach his heart. As soon as he can, he flees the city, keeping his distance. He becomes a mere spectator. He does not identify with these people. They are not “his” people!
This is not Comboni’s attitude. In solidarity with “his” people, he makes “common cause” with the Africans. He contemplates them from the hill of Calvary, with the gaze of the pierced Heart of Christ the Good Shepherd — ready to give his life for them. That is his privileged place of observation, in the shadow of the Cross.
From which hill do we contemplate the world? From the fortress-hill of our selfishness (and may God save us from a vulture’s gaze!), or from the hill of solidarity where the cross of Christ was planted, with the gentle gaze of the dove that flies forth to announce peace?
A City and a Prophet to Be Saved
Jonah’s preaching, however, achieves an unexpected success. The king decrees a fast of repentance and conversion. And God forgives. In truth, the threat of his justice was but a “weapon” in the service of mercy.
There is great joy in heaven and rejoicing in Nineveh — but not in Jonah’s heart. The outcome he desired was another: that fire might descend from heaven, as in the days of Elijah. Jonah is so angered by this that he calls upon death. Deep down, he is the elder son of the parable of the prodigal son — refusing to share the Father’s joy and to welcome the brother who was lost.
But the Father who saved Nineveh also wishes to save his prophet. Jonah, on the hilltop, takes shelter from the sun beneath some branches. God then causes a plant to grow to shade his head and soothe his ill humour. Jonah rejoices at this.
The next day, however, the Lord sends a small messenger — a mere worm — which gnaws at the plant’s root. Then he sends the scorching wind and blazing sun to beat upon the prophet’s head, until, faint and exasperated, Jonah once more begs for death.
The book ends with a question — addressed to the prophet, but also to us, who so often despair over trivial matters without concern for others’ fate: “You have had pity on a plant, for which you did not labour… And should I not have pity on the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand human beings who do not know their right hand from their left — and many animals as well?”
What will my answer be?
Fr. Manuel João Pereira Correia, mccj
