Daily Gospel Reflection: Wednesday of the First Week of Lent
Bishop Robert Barron
February 20, 2024
Wednesday of the First Week of Lent
Gospel: Lk 11:29-32
While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
“This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
At the judgment
the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
and she will condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
and there is something greater than Solomon here.
At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it,
because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
and there is something greater than Jonah here.”
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the crowd that the only sign he will give is the sign of Jonah—the victory of his death and Resurrection.
If Jesus had died and simply remained in his grave, he would be remembered (if he was remembered at all) as a noble idealist, tragically crushed by the forces of history. There could have been, in the first century, no surer sign that someone was not the Messiah than his death at the hands of the enemies of Israel, for one of the central marks of messiahship was precisely victory over those enemies.
That Peter, James, John, Paul, and the rest could announce throughout the Mediterranean world that Jesus was in fact the long-awaited Israelite Messiah, and that they could go to their deaths defending this claim, are the surest indications that something monumentally significant happened to Jesus after his death.
That something was the Resurrection. Though too many modern theologians have tried to explain the Resurrection away as a wish-fulfilling fantasy, a vague symbol, or a literary invention, the New Testament writers could not be clearer: the crucified Jesus, who had died and been buried, appeared alive again to his disciples.
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