From the Book of Jonah 1:1, “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.’” From there, most grade school children can tell you what happened next.
Jonah said, “No.” He believed that if he went to Nineveh and preached, the people would repent and be saved. He did not want that. He wanted them to pay for their wickedness, so he fled instead of doing as God asked. Going to the coast, he boarded a ship and set sail. While Jonah slept below deck, a great storm blew in. The sailors began praying to their various gods, to no avail. Finally, the captain found Jonah sleeping and demanded to know why Jonah wasn’t also praying. When Jonah realized that it was his fault that everyone was about to die, he said, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.”
At first, the other men hesitated, but when the storm only worsened, they picked up Jonah and pitched him into the sea. From there, we are told, “And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” Then Jonah prayed. In the words of his prayer, you might also hear words Jesus may have prayed as he slept in the belly of the earth for three days.
“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.
Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple.’
The waters closed in over me to take my life;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord my God.
When my life was fainting away,
I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple.
Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of steadfast love.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the Lord!”
After Jonah’s prayer, on the third day, “The Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.” And we know that, on the third day, Jesus rose from the earth, the tomb.
Jesus said, “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.”
The sign of Jonah is the descending into the waters and the belly of the beast. It is entering into sin, chaos, and death, but it is also rising from chaos and death to new life. Therefore, the sign of Jonah is also our life with God, for as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins… But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”
Jonah prayed in the belly of the whale, and I feel that his words were near to the heart of Jesus as he lay in the belly of the earth. On those days of great trial, you can also make these words yours, knowing as they both did, “Salvation belongs to the Lord!”
Candle in a Cave 