Week 27 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Jonah 1.1-2-1, 11; Jonah 2.3-5, 8; Luke 10.25-37

One sign of an authentic prophet is that he or she will be reluctant to take on the job. We see it with Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos, for example. Most dramatically we see it with Jonah, in today's first reading. He immediately flees in the opposite direction though the Lord will have His way with him and eventually get him to Nineveh. The real prophets understood that the job was demanding, not an easy vocation to take up, and likely to involve a great personal cost. Hence their reluctance. So if you meet someone who is too keen to be a prophet - a bearer of God's Word to others - be suspicious and be careful,

The 'sign of Jonah' in Luke's gospel is the speed at which the people of Niniveh repent when he finally shows up there and calls them to repentance. All the drama has preceded that moment, in Jonah's own struggle to avoid it, which adds to the humour of the story and his own bewilderment. Poor Jonah! It is as if the Lord is playing games with him, even if it is for a good purpose, for his formation in wisdom and the people's salvation in Nineveh.

The gospel reading illustrates the fact that Jesus, having asked many questions of others, rarely answered directly the questions put to him. He did do so usually with a parable - a kind of game or trick very often - or with a question of his own. Both things happen here.

To the lawyer's question 'who is my neighbour?' he answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan. But he ends it by reversing the lawyer's question: 'which of the three who saw the man on the road was neighbour to him?' In this way he throws the question back at the lawyer, changes it from what could have been simply a philosophical or sociological question, and turns it into a moral and spiritual question aimed directly at the lawyer's own practice.

'Are you a neighbour?' is effectively the question at the end of the encounter. 'You clearly know what it involves - go and do likewise'. Like Jonah we might try to run away from the implications of this and often we do turn away. But it will always follow us and, with God's grace, will determine our way of living, at least from time to time.