Three Day Lent – Day 2 – Imitating Christ

In the name of God the Father, Christ Jesus His Son and the Holy Spirit, One True God. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

We are now coming to a close of the 2nd day of the Three Day Lent. Yesterday we read that the placement of the Lent in the Liturgical Calendar of the Church after the Feast of Theophany and before we begin our pilgrimage to the Cross on Calvary to meet our Lord and Saviour at the time of His crucifixion and later on marvelling at His resurrection from the death forces us to think that this Lent is a call for us all to imitate Christ. For Christ is the perfect example for us to imitate in our lives to grow closer to God. He is the perfect example of submission to the divine plan of God. 

But how should we imitate Christ? This question seems a bit puzzling and there seems to end number of answers to the question. But looking at the life of Jonah, let us try to understand how can we imitate Christ in our lives – for Jonah being an Old Testament prophet prefigures Christ in His perfection.

Jonah was a prophet and as a prophet his primary role was to speak with the people about the words and will of God in their specific situations. He was to serve as God’s megaphones, declaring whatever God commanded him to say. He was a person who was speaking God’s word to the people when they needed to hear it, and many a times, these words were not what people wanted to hear. But he was chosen not to be a prophet to his own people, the people of Israel, but he was sent to the people of Nineveh. That is indeed a very difficult role – to be called to prophesy to his enemies. Nineveh was the capital city of the then Assyrian empire and is located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. And the Assyrian empire was an enemy of the country of Israel and was looking for an opportunity to capture it.

Nineveh was a very large and wealthy city. But the people of the city were cruel and filled with lies and robbery. It is said that the atrocities of the people had risen to such an extent that the blood of her enemies ran down the streets of the city. The city had gathered its wealth from pillaging and destroying the surrounding countries and Jonah was chosen to go to such a group of people and proclaim the message of repentance.

Placing ourselves in the shoes of Jonah, what would we do if we were called to go to such a city? Would we not think twice or thrice before embarking on a journey to a city where we might lose our life? Would we not like Jonah be tempted to go a different way to the path that God calls us to walk? Would we not shirk off our calling to find a much easier path in our life? Do we not do that even now?

But after learning that we are called to imitate Christ in our lives, should that be our response? Christ, like Jonah, was also sent to preach the message of repentance and to reconcile the whole creation back to our Creator. He was sent among the wolves as a silent lamb to be slaughtered as a sacrifice. The whole purpose of Jesus being incarnated was for the redemption of mankind through His death on the Cross. He, being God, could have declined to humiliate Himself as a human being. He could have declined to lay down His life at the Cross. He could have gone against the wishes of the Heavenly Father but have hold onto His life. He could have proclaimed Himself as a King during any number of occasions and could have changed the course of history in itself.

But He willingly submitted His life in total obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father. He humbled Himself to such an extent of becoming a human being so that we could be one among His creation. He even humbled Himself to die for the sins of the mankind by dying on the Cross. In such a manner, Jesus showed us that He is the true prophet proclaiming the words of the Father calling us to repent of our sins and reconcile with Him.

We who call ourselves followers of Christ and baptized with Him are also called to be prophets along with Him. We are called to be prophets to the dark and sinful world. Being followers of Christ and called to be His prophets, we are called to share in the life and death of Christ. Being His followers and being baptized in His name does not give us any extra dignity or privilege in life but it should make us able to wade into the depths of human sinfulness and proclaim the love of God. We are not meant to carry on our responsibility through our own strength but through the grace and mercy we receive from the world.

Just as Jesus lived His life being surrounded by the pains of the people around Him, we are also called to live and share in the pains of those around us. We are not called to place ourselves in a net of safety but rather find ourselves in the neighbourhood of great suffering and pain and that is where we will find Christ working in us and around us.

Dear brothers and sisters, as I come to a close of my thoughts for the 2nd day, we realized yesterday that this Fast is a call for us all to imitate Christ and today my thoughts has been on how we are to imitate Him. In this world full of wickedness and sin, we are called to be prophets in this world and declare the words of God and bring back His creation back to Him.

Your brother in Christ Jesus

Jobin George