Some days, the inner weather matches the sky: scattered storms, sudden squalls, a desire to run. Today’s Scriptures name that flight and then answer it with a mercy that crosses the road. Jonah runs from God and finds himself in a storm of his own making (Jon 1:1-3). A nameless Samaritan stops for a stranger and finds himself carrying another’s life (Lk 10:33-35). Between the flight and the stop, between descent and compassion, the Lord teaches us how to live.
When Flight Deepens the Storm (Jon 1:1–2:2, 11; Jonah 2:3-8)
The command to Jonah is clear: “Set out for the great city of Nineveh” (Jon 1:2). Jonah sets out—just in the opposite direction (Jon 1:3). The text piles up verbs of descent: he goes down to Joppa, down into the ship’s hold, down into sleep (Jon 1:3-5). The storm that follows exposes a painful truth: when we flee God’s call—out of resentment, fatigue, fear, or cynicism—we do not simply pause our vocation; we become part of the turbulence in our world.
The pagan sailors become reluctant prophets to the prophet, pleading for prayer and moral responsibility (Jon 1:6, 14). When they finally cast Jonah overboard, the sea grows calm and their hearts turn to worship (Jon 1:15-16). Even Jonah’s failure becomes a doorway for others to meet God. This is not to excuse sin, but to magnify grace: God can draw straight with our crooked lines.
In the belly of the fish—three days and three nights, a sign Jesus later takes to himself (Mt 12:40)—Jonah learns to pray again: “Out of my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me” (Jon 2:3). The psalm today puts that prayer on our lips: “You will rescue my life from the pit, O Lord” (Jonah 2:3-8). St. Jerome loved Scripture’s realism here: the way God’s mercy does not bypass our depths but meets us in them. The fish is not punishment but protection; it is the strange shelter where repentance ripens.
For those weathering anxiety, burnout, or the ache of relational fracture, Jonah offers a map: stop running, tell the truth, cry out. Descent can become deliverance when it becomes prayer.
“Who Is My Neighbor?” The Mercy That Crosses the Road (Lk 10:25-37; Jn 13:34)
A scholar asks the right question—“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”—and gives the right answer: love God with everything and your neighbor as yourself (Lk 10:25-28). But he then asks the question that reveals our bargaining heart: “And who is my neighbor?” (Lk 10:29). In other words: How small can the circle be and still count as love?
Jesus answers with a story big enough to redraw our boundaries. A battered man lies in the road. Religious professionals pass by—perhaps late, perhaps afraid, perhaps convinced that ritual purity or urgent duties absolve them (Lk 10:31-32). A Samaritan, a cultural outsider, “was moved with compassion” (Lk 10:33). He approaches, binds wounds with oil and wine, lifts, carries, lodges, pays, promises more (Lk 10:34-35). The neighbor is not the one who shares your border or your beliefs, but the one who shares your burden. “Which of these three…was neighbor?” Jesus asks. The scholar answers correctly: “The one who treated him with mercy” (Lk 10:36-37). Jesus’ final word is not a sentiment but a summons: “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). This is the new commandment in motion: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34).
In a polarized world, the wounded often lie along our digital roads: a colleague quietly unraveling, a neighbor with food insecurity, a family member in depression, a stranger vilified online. Love begins by crossing the road—by moving toward the pain we would rather scroll past. It costs time, coin, and comfort. It also heals the world.
The Inn and the Long Care: Ambrose’s Lens
St. Ambrose of Milan, reading this Gospel, saw Christ in the Samaritan. Humanity, wounded by sin and violence, lies half-dead. The “Samaritan”—despised and unexpected—draws near: Christ “approaches” us in the Incarnation, binds our wounds with wine and oil—symbols of the sacraments and the healing word—lifts us onto his own beast—his cross-bearing body—and brings us to the inn, which Ambrose reads as the Church, a house of convalescence for sinners. The two coins he leaves, Ambrose suggests, can signify the two Testaments or the two great commandments, the treasury with which the Church tends the wounded until Christ returns.
Ambrose’s reading keeps us from reducing the parable to generic kindness. Mercy is deeply Christ-shaped. The Church is not a museum of the perfect but a clinic for the broken. And our discipleship is participation in Christ’s merciful nearness: we are not saviors, but we get to share in the Savior’s work.
Turning From Flight to Mercy: Practicing the Way This Week
- Name your Nineveh. What call, conversation, or task have you avoided? Pray Jonah’s psalm aloud (Jonah 2:3-8). Ask for the grace to stop running and take the first faithful step.
- Cross one road. Intentionally interrupt your schedule to tend one concrete need: a visit, a ride, a meal, a listening hour, a donation that actually costs.
- Become an “inn.” Make your home, parish group, or workplace corner safer for honest wounds. Keep “oil and wine” at hand: a Scripture to share, a sacramental plan (Confession, Anointing, Eucharist), a referral for counseling, a phone number to call.
Saints Who Teach Us How: Bruno and Marie-Rose
Today’s optional memorials offer two complementary witnesses. St. Bruno (c. 1030–1101), founder of the Carthusians, chose a hidden life of silence and prayer. His solitude is not an escape but the place where he learned to hear God in the depths—Jonah’s lesson writ large. From such listening comes true compassion. Blessed Marie-Rose Durocher (1811–1849), Canadian foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, poured out her life for education and the dignity of the poor. She crossed many roads—geographic, social, and institutional—to tend wounds of ignorance and exclusion. Contemplation and action are not rivals; they complete each other. Interior stillness makes mercy sustainable; mercy gives stillness a mission.
The Harmony of Today’s Word
Jonah teaches that our running breeds storms, but our repentance opens mercy’s path (Jon 1:12-16; 2:1-2, 11). The Good Samaritan shows that love is not a feeling we wait for but a road we choose to cross (Lk 10:33-37). Jesus’ new commandment gives the measure: “as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). In a culture of hurry and suspicion, Christians can be recognized by two movements: down and across—down into humility and prayer when we fail, across the road toward whoever is bleeding next. There, in the belly of the fish and on the shoulder of the Samaritan, we meet Christ and learn to love. Go, and do likewise.