6 October 2015
Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Let us imagine a scenario: you are invited to speak at a secular university that is very hostile to religion. You have to face secular “zealot” professors who have mission to convert their students to have views more like them when they leave college. Moreover, you also have to face many skeptical students who are not taught about the truth and ideas that have shaped history and will shape our future. Can you imagine that? You may be prompted to respond like Jonah: “Forty days more and your university shall be destroyed.” Can you imagine the university community repenting like the people of Niniveh, who did repent after hearing the word of God?
God wanted to destroy the city of Nineveh not simply because they were immoral but also because they were impious in the first place. Immorality is always preceded by impiety. Immoral acts in our streets, schools, and universities happens because there is irreverence in our hearts. We live in a time of great turbulence where religion is under attack. Religious believers and their leaders, however, have made a major tactical mistake in discussing this issue under the rubric of “religious accommodation” or “freedom of religion”. The real concern is that the attack against religion is merely symptomatic and cannot be changed by the law. We ought to change the heart of the individual and only God is big enough to do what he did to the people of Niniveh.