Repent anyway

They say that there are some wrongs that cannot be forgiven.

They say that once things get to a certain point, there is no turning back: you are simply and inescapably doomed.

That easily could have been how the people of Nineveh might have interpreted the message of Jonah in today’s first reading (Jonah 3:1-10):

Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

A rather clear pronouncement of certain doom.

But that was not how the people of Nineveh interpreted it.

Instead, the people of Nineveh took Jonah’s dire words as an opportunity to repent: an opportunity they seized, repenting with extraordinary fervor.

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

As it turned out, the people of Nineveh were right: this was an opportunity for repentance and thus they were saved.

In our own lives, we need to be careful not to let such opportunities for repentance go by.

Perhaps we feel trapped in a lifestyle that is very far from what God wants for us.

Perhaps we have been living with a particular sin that seems intractable: we just cannot seem to help ourselves.

Perhaps we have been living a relatively righteous life but with an inescapable feeling of hypocrisy: everyone thinks so well of us, we cannot come clean.

Repent anyway.

If God’s mercy and grace of repentance can be poured out so extraordinarily upon the citizens of Nineveh, how much greater and richer the graces of repentance and forgiveness that are available to us in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who shed his own blood for our sins!

No matter how great, how hidden, or how relentless the sin, repent anyway, for the grace of Jesus Christ is ever more powerful, ever more loving, and truly everlasting.

Praised be Jesus Christ.