Lent, this special season that prepares us for Holy Week, is a season that, among other things, has a penitential component. It is good, from time to time, to review our lives, our attitudes, and the way we treat others, and to do so with a sense of repentance. Where am I allowing myself to be led by selfishness and indifference? Have I hurt the people around me? Am I wasting time and energies in activities that don’t help to build the Kingdom?
We should not live immersed in an unhealthy sense of guilt, but there’s nothing wrong with looking in the mirror from time to time, with absolute sincerity, asking ourselves how we could improve aspects of our daily lives that are not entirely in tune with the Gospel, or that contradict it.
Jesus did not come to overwhelm us with the weight of our sin: in fact, the Gospels make it very clear that he came to free us, among other things, from feeling guilty about everything, assuring us that no matter how many mistakes we make, we can always count on the Father’s mercy. And yet, it is also true that on many occasions Jesus spoke harshly about those who, believing themselves to be perfect and holy, were incapable of self-criticism and did not accept the need to reorient their lives toward God.
On one occasion, looking with sorrow at his contemporaries, he said, «this generation is perverse. It asks for a sign, and none will be given it except the sign of Jonah» (Luke 11:29). In fact, we read this text on Wednesday of the first week of Lent. The interesting thing about this sentence is that Jonah, when he went to preach the conversion of Nineveh did not perform any sign! Indeed, before the Ninevites, Jonah did not do any miracle. The biblical text tells us that when he finally arrived at the great city (after trying to escape the mission God had entrusted to him), he simply «walked for a whole day, proclaiming, 'In forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed!'». That’s all. He didn’t back up his preaching with any flashy gestures, nor did he accompany his words with any demonstration of power, showing that Yahweh was on their side. He simply announced that God’s patience was running out... and that was enough for the Ninevites to make a resolution to change their ways and convert.
No sign will be given to us, either, other than the (non)sign of Jonah. Therefore, we should not wait for some spectacular and incontestable event to happen in our lives in order to change those attitudes that distance us from God. The great sign we need to reorient our lives toward goodness has already been given to us: the preaching of Jesus, the message conveyed to us by the Gospels. What more can we hope for, what could be more definitive than the words of the Messiah?
We can all sometimes fall into the self-deception of telling ourselves that we are waiting for something prodigious to happen, a miraculous sign, a truly singular event, to initiate the processes of change that are essential in our lives. «I will change,» we tell ourselves, «when» —and we condition our conversion on the occurrence of great wonders around us. In reality, waiting for astonishing miracles to occur so that we can begin to correct our mistakes is a form of immobility. This Lent, we would do well to remember that we will be given no sign other than the sign of Jonah: the sign of a man announcing that there are better ways to live, with no other power than the reason and force of his words.
