What Jonah sees

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today point out that God is for all people. The danger of our tight focus on our immediate communities and the rituals through which we are gifted by intimate experience of the Presence is that we forget the ongoing plan of God to be with all people. Friar JudeWinkler relates the surprise and depression of Jonah that God should turn back His anger at the people of Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian empire which had conquered Jerusalem. The Gospel of Luke tells of Jesus pointing out to the Jewish people that the pagans had in the past and now, in Jesus time, are hearing the Word of God which is being addressed to the Jews. It is not logical to consider that this acute hearing of the message of Life is somehow in our time now being solely heard by Christian ears. Like Jonah and the Jews of Jesus time we should look around and see how those outside our Tradition are hearing what God is saying and how they may be signs to us of the actions we should take to continue our journey to holiness