Have You Reason to Be Angry?

October 10, 2007

Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

By Melanie Rigney

“Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry that God did not carry out the evil he threatened against Nineveh. He prayed, ‘I beseech you, Lord, is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, loathe to punish. And now, Lord, please take my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.’ But the Lord asked, ‘Have you reason to be angry?’” (Jonah 4:1-4)

“‘Lord, you are kind and forgiving, most loving to all who call on you. Lord, hear my prayer; listen to my cry for help.’” (Psalms 86:5-6)

“Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us…” (Luke 11:3-4)

Piety

Lord, help me to set aside my anger and resentment and forgive and love those in my life, just as you forgive and love me when I call on you.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/101007.shtml

http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0386.asp

Jonah was not happy.

God had promised evil and destruction for Nineveh, and Jonah took obvious pleasure in carrying this word forward. But a funny thing happened: the people turned away from their evil ways, and God changed his mind. That was it for Jonah; he asked that he die rather than live in this environment. The Lord asked, “Have you reason to be angry?”

Jonah then moved to a hut outside the city to watch what would happen. A gourd plant grew up to shelter him, but then it was attacked by a worm and withered. The sun beat down on Jonah, and he again said he would be better off dead. God responded:

You are concerned over the plant which cost you no labor and which you did not raise; it came up in one night and in one night it perished. And should I not be concerned over Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons…?

We can be frightened about coming to God for forgiveness in prayer or through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But once we’re done, we feel so much better! The more challenging mission is to pay that feeling forward and rejoice when others, like the people of Nineveh, find their way to the Lord. And yet, we must. Surely, if God loves and forgives us, as faulty as we are, he also loves and forgives the neighbors and colleagues against whom we have hardened our hearts. And what’s more, he expects us to love and forgive them as well.

Sandra DeGidio, O.S.M., discusses the concept at http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0386.asp in an excerpt from her book Re-Treat Your Family to Lent and Reconciliation: Sacrament With a Future:

…(T)here is something we can do about the unconditional forgiveness we receive from God: forgive as we have been forgiven. Having been forgiven, we are empowered to forgive ourselves and to forgive one another, heal one another and celebrate the fact that together we have come a step closer to the peace, justice and reconciliation that makes us the heralds of Christ's Kingdom on earth.

Action

Forgive someone—with your heart and soul, not just in words.