18 January 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
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“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” Matthew 12:40
The fast of the Ninevites begins with a prophet running away. God sends Jonah to Nineveh, “But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.” A storm rises; the pagan sailors pray while the prophet sleeps below deck. Jonah is like many of us: we know God's will and go the other way. The Three Days' Fast is our chance to stop running, to turn the ship around.
Paul shows the opposite of Jonah: Christ, “though he was in the form of God”, did not run from the Father's will but “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” In the Gospel Jesus names Jonah as his sign: three days in the sea monster, three days in the tomb, and then the rising. Today we also remember Moran Mor Cyril Baselios, who led our Church as its first Major Archbishop, and Joseph Mar Severios. Hebrews tells us: “Remember your leaders… consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”
Theme: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
Jonah runs; Christ obeys; the sign of Jonah is the Resurrection.
“But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.” Jonah 1:3
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Philippians 2:5
Apply: Stop avoiding one thing God asks of you.
“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?” Psalm 139:7
“he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:8
Apply: Accept one humbling thing without complaint.
“But the LORD provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” Jonah 1:17
“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” Matthew 12:40
Apply: Bring a dead area of your life to the risen Christ.
The fast begins by stopping our flight.
The obedient Christ is our sign of hope.
Take-home resolution: Keep the three days' fast with prayer and almsgiving.
Dear friends, the fast of the Ninevites begins with a prophet running away. God says to Jonah: go to Nineveh. But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD (Jonah 1:3). The storm rises, the pagan sailors pray, and the prophet sleeps.
We are often like Jonah. We know what God wants and we go the other way. These three days are our chance to stop running.
Paul shows us the opposite: Christ humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). And Jesus calls himself the sign of Jonah: three days in the heart of the earth, then the Resurrection (Matthew 12:40).
Today we remember Moran Mor Cyril Baselios and Joseph Mar Severios, shepherds of our Church. Remember your leaders, says Hebrews, and imitate their faith (Hebrews 13:7). Let us turn the ship around and walk with Christ. Amen.
Children, Jonah ran away from God, but God did not give up on him! These three days, let us say sorry and come back to God.
Lord Jesus, you obeyed the Father to the cross and rose on the third day, the true sign of Jonah. As we begin the fast of the Ninevites, turn us back from our flight, humble our hearts, and through the prayers of Moran Mor Cyril Baselios and Joseph Mar Severios keep our Church faithful. Amen.
The three days of the fast of the Ninevites begin with a prophet running away. Jonah hears God's call and goes the other way, and the pagan sailors pray while he sleeps. The Epistle (Philippians 2:1–11) shows the opposite road: Christ “humbled himself and became obedient”. In the Gospel Jesus takes Jonah as the only sign he will give. The key words are go down and sign.
Setting.
Jonah son of Amittai is named in 2 Kings 14:25 as a prophet in the reign of Jeroboam II, in the eighth century BC. The book that bears his name is different from the other prophets. It is a short story about a prophet, with hardly any oracles. Nineveh, on the Tigris opposite modern Mosul, was a great city of Assyria, and it became the empire's capital. Assyria had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, and to an Israelite ear the name meant cruelty (see Nahum 3). Nineveh fell in 612 BC. God sends the prophet to the enemy's own city.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
““Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.”” (1:2)
God is concerned with the sin of a people who are not Israel. From its first lines the book says he is the God of all nations.
“But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” (1:3)
Nineveh lay to the east. Tarshish, perhaps in Spain, stood for the far end of the western sea. The storyteller does not yet say why Jonah runs. We learn that only in 4:2.
“Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep.” (1:5)
Everyone on board is praying to some god, and the one man who knows the true God is asleep.
““What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”” (1:6)
A pagan captain speaks the words a prophet should be saying. His “Get up” is the same word God used in v. 2 (“Go at once” is literally “Get up, go”). God's call comes back to Jonah on a stranger's lips.
How the Church reads it.
Centuries later, at this same port of Joppa, God told another Jewish preacher, Peter, to go to the Gentiles (Acts 10:5–23). Peter also resisted at first, and then he went. The Syriac Churches have loved this book; a long verse homily on the repentance of Nineveh has come down under the name of Mar Aprem (Ephrem). The Catechism names the seasons of penance as intense moments of the Church's penitential practice (CCC 1438). The fast begins with the honest question whether I too am running.
Setting.
Jesus has healed a man who was blind and mute, and his opponents have said that he does this by the power of demons (12:22–37). Now “some of the scribes and Pharisees” ask for a sign. Matthew says “some”. Jesus, a Jew speaking to his fellow Jews as the prophets did, is addressing those who are refusing him at that moment. Jonah's home was Gath-hepher (2 Kings 14:25), generally placed in Galilee, not far from Nazareth.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
““An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” (12:39)
They already have many signs in front of them. What is lacking is the will to believe.
“so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” (12:40)
Jesus rose on the third day, and in Jewish reckoning part of a day could count as a whole day and night. This is how Matthew explains the sign: a man goes down into death and comes back.
“The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!” (12:41)
The verse lets Gentiles stand as witnesses in the judgment. These are the people of the fast we are beginning: they had less and they did more.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism lists the sign of Jonah among the ways Jesus linked faith in the resurrection to his own person (CCC 994), and teaches that he truly went down into the realm of the dead (CCC 632–635). In the Roman catacombs Jonah is one of the most frequently painted figures. Early Christians, burying their dead, drew the man thrown up alive from the fish. For them he was a picture of Christ's Pasch and of their own hope.
Did a fish really swallow Jonah?
Catholics may read this question calmly. Many Fathers took the story as history. Many Catholic scholars today, and notes such as those of the Jerusalem Bible, read the book as an inspired teaching story, since it has the marks of one; the Church asks us to attend to the literary form of each book (Dei Verbum 12) and has not defined this point. Jesus' comparison holds either way, for the point of both is God's mercy and the resurrection. What we may not do is argue about the fish and miss the call to repent.
Baooutho d'Ninwoye, the supplication of the Ninevites, is an old fast of the Syriac Churches. Accounts of its beginning differ. East Syriac memory links it with a plague in sixth-century Mesopotamia, and West Syriac tradition credits Mar Marutha of Tikrit (seventh century) with spreading it. The Thomas Christians of Kerala have long kept it as Moonnu Nombu, and the Coptic Church keeps a Fast of Nineveh too. Today our calendar also remembers Moran Mor Cyril Baselios Catholicos (+2007), first Major Archbishop of our Church, and Joseph Mar Severios (+1955), with Mar Cyril and Mar Athanasius of Alexandria. The Church Unity Octave begins today.