The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Tuesday in the Twenty-Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, Year I, 10 October 2023
Jonah 4:1-11 Luke 11:1-4
Today I pray dear God our loving Father for all my fellow worriers who are like me, always anxious of everything, afraid of chaos and disorder, afraid of failing, lacking in complete trust in you.
Like Martha in today’s gospel, we are anxious snd worried of many things because we forget that only you, O God, is the only one needed.
Many times I am like
Jonah your prophet who believes
more in myself,
judgmental of others
without realizing that
whatever mission you send us to
is all your work, using us only
as your mouth to speak,
hands to care and
reach out to those weak and sick,
feet to stand
for what is true,
just and good.
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. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.
Jonah 3:3-6
When we worry so much, we hurt others too because that is when we underestimate them, when we put them in a box with categories removing every chance to become better like how Jonah perceived the Ninivites or Martha with Mary. How wonderful that every time this happens, you surprise us Lord with the most unexpected happening like when the Ninevites proclaimed a fast and put on a sackcloth, when Jesus praised Mary in choosing him over everything and everyone.
Keep us simple and humble, Jesus, with a lot of humor like Jonah even if your joke is always on us so that we may let go of life's many trials and difficulties. Amen.
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