Pope Francis Santa Marta Mass the Church

The first liturgical reading of today (Jonah 3: 1-10 ), taken from the book of the prophet Jonah, continues the story that began yesterday, and which will end tomorrow, in which the conflicting relationship between God and Jonah is described.

In the previous passage we read that the Lord's first call was that he wanted to send the prophet to Ninevah to preach repentance to that city. But Jonah disobeyed the command and ran away from God, because that task was too difficult for him. He had then embarked for Tarshish, and during a storm aroused by the Lord he had been thrown overboard to calm the furious storm. A whale that swallowed him, threw him out on the shore after three days, an image that reminds us of Christ’s Resurrection on the third day.

In todays reading (Jonah 3: 1-10) there is the second call: God speaks to Jonah again and this time Jonah obeys God, goes to preach to the Ninevites who convert and God relents from punishing them. This time the "stubborn Jonah" did his job well and then he left.

Tomorrow we will see how the story ends and that Jonah is angry at the Lord because he is too merciful and because He does the opposite of what he had threatened to do.

Jonah scolds the Lord: "Lord, wasn't that what I said when I was in my country? This is why I fled at first to Tarshish. because I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, of great love, and that you reconsider threatened punishment. Therefore, Lord, take my life: I do not want to work with you anymore, because it is better for me to die than to live. It is better to die than to continue this work as a prophet with you, that in the end you do the opposite of what you sent me to do.

Saying this, Jonah goes out of the city and builds a hut from there waits to see what the Lord will do. Jonah hoped that God would destroy the city. The Lord then makes a gourd plant grow over the prophet to provide him shade. But soon God causes the plant to wither and die.

Jonah is once again outraged at God over the gourd plant. Do you have pity for a plant, the Lord tells him, for which you have made no effort and I should not have pity on a great city like Ninevah?

The heated exchange between the Lord and Jonah is between two hardheads.

Jonah is stubborn with his convictions of faith, and the Lord is stubborn in His mercy. He never leaves us, he knocks on the door of the heart till the end. He’s always there.

Jonah was stubborn because he put conditions on his faith. Jonah is the model of those Christians who always put conditions saying, "I am a Christian on condition that things are done this way." - " No, no, these changes are not Christian" - "This is heresy" - "This is not right" ...They are Christians who condition God, who condition the faith and the action of God.

It is this "as long as" that keeps so many Christians in their own ideas and end up in ideology: it is the bad path from faith to ideology. And today there are so many. These Christians are afraid: to grow up, to the challenges of life, of the challenges of the Lord, of the challenges of history, attached to their convictions, in their first convictions, in their own ideologies. They are Christians who prefer ideology to faith and distance themselves from the community, are afraid to put themselves in God's hands and prefer to judge everything, but from the smallness of their hearts.

The story of Jonah presents two figures of the Church today. The Church of those ideologues who squat in their own ideologies, there, and the church that shows the Lord who approaches all situations without disgust. Things do not disgust the Lord, our sins don’t disgust. He approaches as He approached to caress the lepers and the sick. Because He came to heal, He came to save, not to condemn.