Jonah, my personality twin

There is something greater than Jonah here. –Matthew 12:41

Let me tell you something about Jonah. I have a love/hate relationship with him. Not that he isn’t a great Prophet or anything. It’s just that irritation we recognize as a result of *those* people who remind us of our own faults. They rub us the wrong way.

I have a vivid memory stored in my mind of a girls’ weekend during grad school where I snuck away with friends to rest/eat/drink/marvel at the work we had been about. Many of us were wrapping up capstone projects; one was carrying a new life. We were deep in discernment around what was to come next, and getting away and into the quiet of the snowy woods felt good.

The time away was balm for my spirit–driving home, less so

Along the way, someone had been learning about the enneagram. It really can be a wonderful tool  to help identify strengths and weaknesses for self-reflection or group work. She pulled it out during the drive home for the fun of it.

While we took our little inventories and scored ourselves based on preferences and natural tendencies, I quickly identified myself as a “nine;” the peace-maker. This was not at all surprising. If anything it was an affirmation of what I knew to be true about myself after twenty-odd trips around the sun.

As we talked about the ‘fit’ of our characteristics, we began reading about the Scripture that might shed the most light on our gifts and ‘growing edges.’ You already know what’s coming. My Scripture story: You Guessed it.

Jonah. The man God asked to save Nineveh. Jonah the great prophet, who out of fear of the task set before him, hops a ship to run away from God’s call. Not only that, when his shipmates figure out who he is running from, they send him overboard at which time he is swallowed by a whale. All before he gets up the gumption to do what it is that was being asked of him, and is promptly dispatched from the belly of the whale to go and get to work.

Sweet humility: Jonah is my Scriptural personality twin

Regardless of his slow start, once he gets moving, Jonah has tremendous success. Nineveh is a huge city—one that takes three days to walk through. “Forty more days and Nineveh will fall,” is the unpopular message he’d been told to share. As a peacemaker, I feel for him roaming about with this message. No one in Nineveh wanted to hear that. But, because of Jonah’s obedience and (eventual) courage, the Ninevites and their king put on sackcloth, fasted, and repented. Having witness their metanoia, God did not carry out the evil that He intended (Jonah 1-2).

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Take-aways

1. Growing up, I always heard that having the kinds of folks in our lives who happen to irk us, is in fact a good reminder of how not to behave. I believe it–there is hope for growth in each of us. *Though truthfully, I still squirm a bit even when I see illustrations in children’s Bible stories of Jonah inside the belly of a whale!
2. Particularly when God is guiding any of us toward something—regardless of how uncomfortable or unprepared we feel for the endeavor ahead—our level of anxiety is not proportionate to its impending failure. Sure, it is possible. But, more often than not, if God is leading the venture, failure wasn’t on the table to begin with.

Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and there is something greater than Jonah here.

Matthew 12:40-41

As we continue to embrace to affects of Holy week, Jonah might be a fitting companion. For all his faults, Jonah does know a thing or two about cooperating with God in unimaginable and salvific circumstances; which is our invitation, too. The process of dying to ourselves to rise is Paschal mystery in a nutshell.

Summoning courage

In the spirit of summoning courage to begin something new that I have been putting off for a while, I am inviting you to take part with me in a deep-dive into Catholic Social Teaching. My hope is to dig into these tenets of our faith has been with me for years now, and I am finally ready to do it and am hoping that you’ll join me!

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This post is part of a blog hop by Spoken Women, an online community of Catholic women nurturing their creative callings. Click here to view the next post in this series “Something Greater.” *