sinner, satanist, saint

Jonah 1:1-2,2:1-11; YOu will rescue my life from the pit, O Lord; Luke 10:25-37

"But Jonah made ready to flee to Tarshish away from the Lord."

We find these words written in the story of Jonah we experience today.

How often is this the case, where many a men and women flee from the Lord? There are too many to count.

What Jonah experiences on the boat as he flees, we experience in the world.

"The Lord hurled a violent wind upon the sea, and in the furious tempest that arose the ship was on the point of breaking up. Then the mariners became frightened and each one cried to his god..."


Look out into the world. The world is shaken with violence and poverty and disease. Not that God is punishing us, but rather by turning away from God we also turn away from all that is good. We bring self-destruction upon our self.

Just look around!

But all hope is not lost. God finds a away to call us back to himself.

Jonah is thrown over board where a whale swallows him up. In the belly of the fish for three days he journeys.

The path back to God is not an easy one. We too must deal with the belly of the fish, the stench of our past lives and decisions. They too linger even though we seek to return to the lord. We must wade through our past lives in order to experience a true conversion.

"Then the Lord commanded the fish to spew Jonah upon the shore."

What a nasty image. Jonah being spewed out of the mouth of the fish. The story of Jonah can easily be seen as a paradigm for conversion.

Today in the church we remember Blessed Bortolo Longo. He was born in 1841 in Italy. He was raised in the faith but upon his mother's death at the age of ten he began to drift away. In college he turned away completely where he was caught up in all kinds of things even the Satanic cult, where he became a satanic priest devoting his life to speak against the Catholic faith and all that was associated with God and Christ.

After sometime, a old professor met up with him and told him that he was on the path of damnation. Assisted by this professor and an Dominican priest, Bartolo came back to the faith, as the writers of biography say, "after much study, prayer, and lengthy confession."


Bartolo began to devote his life to the sick, poor, and the uneducated, teaching them to read, and write, and reaching out to them in their need. He saw it as his way of making amends for decisions of his past and as an effort to repair the damage he caused to so many as a satanist.

He began to pray the rosary daily and he grew in holiness. What a turn around! Bartolo went form a sinner, to a satanist, to a saint.


Here you can read about his life

But in all actuality the potential for holiness was always there. Such it is with all of us.
The path of conversion is not easy but it is transformative.

He learned what Jesus tells us in the parable, of the Good Samaritan, it is not we who justify ourselves but rather Christ who justifies all of us and makes the path of holiness always with in our reach.

"Which of these three were neighbor to the robber's victim?" Asked JEsus. HE answered "The one who treated him with mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."