Wednesday of the First Week of Lent Reading:

Reading 1: Jonah 3:1-10,

Responsorial Psalm: 51:3-4, 12-13, 18-19

Gospel: Luke 11:29-32

Today’s readings are a tale of two generations. On the one hand, we have the generation of Nineveh, which, caught up in its evil ways, finally repents at the promptings of the prophet Jonah. On the other hand, we have the generation of Jesus’s own day, which He describes as an evil generation for its lack of faith and repentance (see Luke 11:29). On judgement day, Our Lord tells us, the holy men of Nineveh and the queen of the south will rise and condemn that generation for its wicked ways. But what of our own day and age? Are we any different? Looking at the world around us, it appears that the tragic answer, if anything, is that ours is an even worse generation.

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren, in a September 2015 address to the World Meeting of Families, expressed it well when he said, “In today’s society, materialism is idolized, immorality is glamorized, truth is minimized, sin is normalized, divorce is rationalized, and abortion is legalized. “In TV and movies, crime is legitimized, drug use is minimized, comedy is vulgarized, and sex is trivialized. In movies, the Bible is fictionalized, churches are satirized, God is marginalized, and Christians are demonized. The elderly are dehumanized, the sick are euthanized, the poor are victimized, the mentally ill are ostracized, immigrants are stigmatized, and children are tranquilized. “In families around the world, our manners are uncivilized, speech is vulgarized, faith is secularized, and everything is commercialized.”

This is the world in which we live, and the words of the first pope, St. Peter, remain as relevant today as they were in the first century: “Save yourselves from this crooked generation” (Acts 2:40). As Christians we were born to stand out! Like Jonah, by virtue of our baptism, we have been given a prophetic mission, and ours is the task of proclaiming the truth and light of the Gospel to this broken world of ours.

What does it mean to be in the world, but not of the world? Am I living this out successfully? 

Reference:

Journey Through Lent: Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings by Clement Harrold