We receive an important and challenging lesson from the prophet Jonah today. We remember how Jonah fled when God first called him to preach repentance to the Ninevites. After God’s persistence, Jonah finally obeyed and went to Nineveh, proclaiming repentance. Yet today we find him sitting outside the city, waiting to watch its destruction. Instead of fire and ruin, however, Jonah witnesses God’s mercy and forgiveness as the people repent — and this makes him angry.
At this point in the story, it is Jonah who stands in need of mercy and conversion. He had judged the people of Nineveh as unworthy of God’s compassion and doubted that his mission would bear fruit. Jonah looked forward not to their conversion but to their destruction. His anger revealed a lack of faith and trust in God’s mercy — and a heart closed to the very love he was called to proclaim.
As baptized members of the Body of Christ, we too are sent by the Lord into our communities to preach the Gospel of repentance and love. Yet we often resist. We hesitate out of fear of rejection or ridicule. We doubt the power of God’s grace to change hearts. We convince ourselves that “people will never change,” and at times we even give up on them.
Recently, Pope Leo XIV reminded us that the mission of the Church is not to solve every problem in the world but to preach the Gospel. The Scriptures today call us back to that same truth. We are not the ones who bring about conversion — God is. Our mission is to prepare the way of the Lord, to help open minds and hearts so that His grace may do the transforming work that only He can accomplish.
Living in Love with God 
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