Tabernacle during Lent
We present two homilies from our daily conventual Masses of the Lenten season, one from Fr. Gregory Havill on “The Sign of Jonah” and the other by Abbot Matthew Stark, on the Chair of Peter.
Nineveh was a huge city in Mesopotamia to which the prophet Jonah, who had been swallowed by a sea monster and miraculously delivered, was sent. According to an ancient midrash, the Ninevites accepted Jonah’s message and did penance because they were aware of his prior fate. Jerusalem, on the other hand, refused to recognize Jesus, of whom Jonah was a figure. The queen of the South had visited Solomon and been amazed by his wisdom (1 Kings 10:1-10). Jesus’ reproach of his skeptics was accentuated by the example of these pagans, the Ninevites and the Queen of the South, which, incidentally, revealed an early glimpse of the universal scope of Christianity which would take root among the Gentiles.
Jesus also gave the crowd in Jerusalem, and us, an early glimpse of his death and resurrection. He did this in answer to their demand from him of a sign to confirm his preaching. He used the parallel case of Jonah, saying: “No sign will be given to this generation except the sign of the Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of man be to this generation.” In Mathew’s version of the same event Jesus continues: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:40). In other words, Jesus’ glorious Resurrection is the great sign, the sign of Jonah, the decisive proof of the divine character of his teaching, his mission and his Person.
High Altar of the Church
Jesus’ Incarnation is the last and highest work of God the Father’s love: “God so loved the world”, writes St. John, “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). In this resides a mystery scarcely credible to our understanding, a mystery which is almost too beautiful to be true, and yet has always been held as true by the Church. In St. Paul’s words: “God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, thereby condemning sin in the flesh of this man” (Rom 8:3). Thus were shattered the gates of hell and those of heaven thrown open.
Our term Lent is based on an Old English word for Springtime, ever anew, the season of new life. In the early Church, Lent early became the time when people were baptized and became Christians. Buried with Christ through Baptism into death to sin, just as he was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father, they, and we too, have newness of life (Romans 6:4). For us, the purpose of Lent is to keep alive in our minds and our lives, the fact that being a Christian can only take the form of becoming a Christian, ever anew, a lifelong journey on which we set out over and over again. When we die to sin in Christ we rise with him, and become, with him, signs like Jonah, for those around us, beacons of hope to a world desperate for meaning.
This feast underlines the role of Peter as the chief of the apostles. We believe that role is continued in the church by the bishop of Rome, the pope, who has the leadership among the bishops of the church, who are the successors of the apostles. In reference to that point here are two quotations from doctors of the early church, teachers of the early church. First, St. Cyprian who here is rebuking another bishop for forgetting that he is under the general leadership of Peter, the pope. “It is because the Lord has said to Peter, ‘Upon this rock will I build my church; to you have I given the keys of the heavenly kingdom.’ Or again Our Lord says to him, ‘Whatsoever you have bound or loosed on earth shall be bound or loosed in heaven.’ You therefore [Cyprian says to this other bishop] presume that the power of binding and loosing has derived to you, that is, to every church, into Peter. What sort of man are you, subverting and wholly changing the manifest intention of Our Lord, conferring as the intention did, the gift [that is the gift of leadership] personally upon Peter. On you, he says, will I build my church and I will give to you [Peter] the keys. Not to “the church” - whatsoever you have loosed or bound, not what they [that is, the other apostles] have loosed or bound. Of course, St. Cyprian did have his problems with a pope later on, but that is the essential teaching. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem said “The Lord is loving unto men [and women] and swift to pardon, but slow to punish. Let no man therefore despair of his own salvation. Peter, the chief and foremost of the apostles, denied the Lord three times because of a little maid [that is the maid who said you were one of the apostles], but he repented himself and wept bitterly. Now, weeping shows the repentance of the heart, and therefore he not only received forgiveness for his denial, but also held on to his apostolic dignity unforfeited.”
Doors of the Church of St. Gregory the Great