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40 Shades of Lent by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Wednesday in the First Week of Lent, 01 March 2023
Jonah 3:1-10 <*{{{{>< +++ ><}}}}*> Luke 11:29-31
O loving Father, teach us to believe again during this blessed season of Lent; help us rediscover our faith to believe in you again amid our many sins and guilt feelings; help us to believe again in people after so many betrayals by friends and family; most of all, help us to believe again in ourselves despite our failures and weaknesses.
So many times we are like your prophet Jonah, so reluctant in answering your calls, so stubborn and hardheaded in our biases and prejudices against others, many times we resort to pessimism and cynicism with how life in the world is going, feeling lost and hopeless.
So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh, according to the Lord’s bidding. Now Nineveh was an enormously large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,” when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.
Jonah 3:3-5
Help us in our unbelief, Lord! Help us stop asking for many signs except Jesus Christ present to us in the Sacraments especially the Eucharist and Confession we often receive these days. Help us to simply believe and obey your words like Jonah at Nineveh. Amen.
