Jonah and the whale give Catholics at least Two Mysteries to solve!
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Question 1: “What Mysteries do Catholics find with Jonah and The Whale and solve with The New Testament?”
Answer: “God used Jonah in The Old Testament to teach a lesson: ‘If people ask God to forgive us, He will If enough people ask God for forgiveness, He will save their nation.’”
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Question 2: “Was Ninevah a huge city whose people were saved by repenting for their sins?”
Answer: “Nineveh was such ‘an enormously large city’ that it took Jonah ‘three days to go through it’. There may have been 50 miles of narrow, crowded streets. Jonah’s announcement got everyone’s attention in Jonah 3:1-10. ‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.’”
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Question 3: “How long did it take the people of Nineveh to realize Jonah was speaking The Word of God and repent of their sins?”
Answer: “The first day of Jonah’s journey through Nineveh, ‘they prolaimed a fast, and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.’”
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Question 4: “That is a Mystery! What made Jonah so believable?”
Answer: “Catholics wonder if digestive juices in the stomach of ‘the giant fish’ that carried Jonah to where he could get to Nineveh gave him credibility. ”
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Question 5: “How could that be?”
Answer; “The digestive juices in a fish’s stomach dissolve every part of the smaller fish it eats. Jonah was horribly disfigured by those acids. Everyone who saw him asked, ‘What happened to you?’
Jonah expained what happened to him. People clearly saw that only a Miracle from God would have allowed him to survive and become God’s Living Warning to them.” Catholics realize that Jonah may have looked like Jesus did after He was scourged at the pillar.
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Question 6: “Did God forgive them when they repented?”
Answer: “Few people can understand This Mystery in God’s Word! ‘When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, He repented of the evil that He had threatened to do to them; He did not carry it out.’”
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Question 7: “What is ‘The Mystery’?”
Answer: “God ‘repented’. Why would God, Who is always right, ‘repent’ anything?”
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Question 8: “Can you Catholics solve That Mystery?”
Answer: “We connect God’s ‘repentence’ to Today’s Reading, which includes Mark 1:15, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.’”
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One Catholic solution to That Mystery: God is able to “repent” for His anger against sinners by giving us His example. Catholics solve That Mystery by reading James 2:8: “Well, the right thing to do is keep The Supreme Law of Scripture, you must love your neighbor as yourself.”
Catholics realize: In a way, we are God’s ‘neighbors’ as soon as we meaningfully “repent” for ours sins and get these “keys”:
“And I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”
When we have and use those “keys”, we may become God’s “neighbors in The Kingdom of Heaven”.
Forever!
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https://catholicfundamentalism.com/ <strong>is:</strong> Simple Reasons to be Catholic. There are interesting ideas to read and share in the short Daily Columns.
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The best book of the last Century is <em>“The Diary of St. Faustina”</em>. It lets each of us realize how much Jesus loves our soul. http://www.seraphim.my/divinemercy/diary/text/DiaryI.htm
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