REFLECTION FOR THE DAY
Jonah 4,1-11/Psa 86,3-4.5-6.9-10/Luke 11,1-4
Reflection :*
(By Most Rev. Emmanuel Kofi Fianu, SVD, Catholic Bishop of Ho Diocese and Vice-President, Ghana Catholic Bishop's Conference)
The rage of Jonah in the First Reading comes as a surprise.
It is not immediately clear why he was angry that God relented and did not punish the people of Nineveh.
Jonah did not consider the people of Nineveh worthy of the compassion of the God of Israel.
He thought God should be kind only to Israel because he is their God and they are his chosen people.
Jonah did not see God as the God of the whole universe.
The Psalmist broadens our horizon when he reminds us that the Lord is good and forgiving; he is full of love to all who call on him.
Thus, it is not only Israel that is a beneficiary of his mercy and
compassion but all who call on him.
We need to reflect carefully on the process that God used to bring Jonah to understand his actions.
Jonah did not plant the castor-oil plant nor nurture it into a shady tree.
God did everything alone and Jonah only benefitted from the work of God.
When, however, this plant withered and deprived Jonah of its shade, he was angry with God.
It was as if the castor-oil plant belonged to him and God has unjustly destroyed it.
Jonah felt he had a right to the castor-oil plant and God was not free to do with it as he willed.
Jonah was not complaining because God was not concerned for the environment.
He was angry for his own selfish end – a shade over his head!
We often forget that what we have comes from God.
We think it is our property by right and we do not think of its source or origin.
Our claim over what surrounds us can be made blindly to the extent of not showing gratitude to God who gives them to us.
In our selfishness, we even think we are right in the way we react to what we do not have.
We easily get angry at God when we see that he provides for other people what we think should be ours.
We should learn to let God be God; that is to say, we should allow God to manifest himself as and when he wants.
On our part, we should be ready to be used as his instruments in accomplishing his will in the lives of others.
We can only offer ourselves wholeheartedly to God’s mission if we learn to pray as Jesus taught his disciples in the Gospel Reading today.
We pray for the grace to be God’s instruments in the realisation of the kingdom that we want we see restored in our own days.
Maryba Theophilus
