{"id":1099,"date":"2016-02-17T09:14:27","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T07:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/?p=1099"},"modified":"2022-03-09T09:59:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T14:59:31","slug":"1st-week-of-lent-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2016\/02\/17\/1st-week-of-lent-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"1st Week of Lent, Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just as the Ninevites in today’s First Reading, Lent is a time when all Christians consider Our Lord’s call for repentance and conversion and consider the path they’ve taken in life. The Ninevites believed the Lord’s warning of destruction; he didn’t exhort repentance, but gave them forty days to figure that out, and they did. Our Lord in today’s Gospel, faced with the incredulity of the crowds, takes them to task for not just rejecting a prophet’s warning, but a warning from God the Son himself. Our Lord warns us that amidst all the “career options” and “lifestyle choices” there is really one path to take. People speak of the road to Hell, but there is only one true road that goes anywhere: the road toward being with God forever that we call Heaven. It’s a road where following the right vocation and making the right choices leads us. If we turn away from that road we’re lost and may contribute to others being led astray as well.<\/p>\n

That thought would be fatalistic if we didn’t remember the point of arrival: a fulfilled and content life in communion with God, a rest from all our labors. In short, true and lasting happiness. Repentance and conversion are not just to make life more miserable or to cramp our lifestyle; they’re the way to get back on track and take the only road and the only lifestyle that truly matters: in imitation of Christ and in communion with God and with others. Otherwise we won’t go the distance.<\/p>\n

Nineveh received a forty day grace period to figure it out; these days of Lent remind us that our whole life is a grace period to find and follow the right road. Let’s use this grace period to recover and foster a life of grace so that when it expires we’re not faced with a dead end or lost along the way. The choice is ours.<\/p>\n

Readings:\u00a0Jonah 3:1\u201310;\u00a0Psalm 51:3\u20134, 12\u201313, 18\u201319;\u00a0Luke 11:29\u201332.<\/em> See also\u00a028th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a016th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a027th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just as the Ninevites in today’s First Reading, Lent is a time when all Christians consider Our Lord’s call for repentance and conversion and consider the path they’ve taken in life. The Ninevites believed the Lord’s warning of destruction; he didn’t exhort repentance, but gave them forty days to figure that out, and they did. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[120,150,12],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-first-week","tag-lent","tag-wednesday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-hJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2255,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/2255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}