Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

REPENTANCE

In today’s Liturgy of the Word, premium is placed on the urgency of repentance, for there is no time for anything. In some Christian circles when they talk of repentance, they stress it with the nuance of a day’s event. People go for religious “crusades” and feel that they are born again, only for them to realize later that they are making the same mistakes that they made prior to their presumed being “born again.” Being “born again” seem to be associated with this annual event of theirs.

But for me, my Catholic orientation teaches me that Repentance is not something that people do once and for all. In fact, it is a life-long project. We must be repenting every day of our lives on earth. Every day, we must be saying “No!” to sin, that is all too pervasive in our world, and “Yes” to God and his kingdom. We need not always put it into words. But it must be manifest in the way we live our lives. Our lives should reflect a permanent attitude of repentance; for that is what repentance really is: an attitude, a way of life, an orientation in life, rather than a merely verbal statement or a wish to be a better person. It is thus the case that a repented person is a new creation. For a Christian to live this way of life and have this attitude all the days of his/her life,  good spiritual guidance from a spiritual director is needed.

It is always the wish of God that his children live as repented people; freed from the slavery of sin. This may have been the desire God had for the Ninevites. That is why he sent Jonah to them to preach repentance. God made Jonah state clearly that if the Ninevites fail to repent, he will destroy them and their city. Jonah in his announcement to repentance stated graphically that: “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed.” What happened that day was conversion followed but destruction did not. It is clear that God wanted to achieve conversion and had no interest in destruction. Since conversion took place there was no need for destruction to follow. But the threat of destruction was no mere scare tactic. God really meant it and the Ninevites rightly took him seriously in this regard. Perhaps they also understood the positive side: that God always wants the good, never destruction. The irony of the book of Jonah is that the prophet becomes annoyed at Yahweh’s inconsistency: How can a God threaten ruin and then not carry it out? Anyway that is the problem for the prophet because it is always the wish of God that the sinner repent and not to die in his/her sins. Our God is good and he is good to us all the time.

There is a caution, time is not on our side, so in the second reading Paul draws sweeping conclusions from the shortness of time. Please, when it comes to repentance and conversion, we should avoid procrastination because it does not serve the end good of the Christian.

In the Gospel, Jesus knits repentance and the urgency into one fabric. It was as if to say; if you want to convert do it now for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. The inspired writer crafts the message beautifully when he quoted Jesus as saying: “The time has come and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” It may have been because of the urgency for people to repent that Jesus called disciples to aid him in his short ministry on earth. Apart from the “shortness of time” that was added to the whole enterprise of repentance, Jesus adds a third element: renunciation of worldly attachment. Just as the sons of Zebedee left their father and the family’s paid employees behind in order to follow Jesus, so the Christian who remains in the world has to let go of much that seems indispensable to him/her, if (s)he is serious about following Jesus. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back at what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). The decision to repent is today and now; and not tomorrow, so heed the call.