The sign of Jonah

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 12:38-42.
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you."
He said to them in reply, "An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.
At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and there is something greater than Jonah here.
At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and there is something greater than Solomon here.


Commentary of the day : Saint Peter Chrysologus
The sign of Jonah

See how the prophet Jonah's flight away from God (Jon 1,3) is transformed into a prophetic image, and what was described as a fatal shipwreck is turned into the sign of the Lord's Resurrection. The very text of the story of Jonah clearly shows him to be a perfect image of our Savior. It is written that Jonah «fled from before the face of God.» And did not our Lord himself flee from the condition and appearance of the divine nature to assume the condition and appearance of man? This is how the apostle Paul puts it: «Though he was divine he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the condition of a slave» (Phil 2,6-7). He who is Lord put on the condition of a slave; to go unrecognised in the world, to conquer the devil, he fled from himself within man... God is everywhere: it is impossible to flee from him. To «flee far away from the face of God» Christ hid himself, not spatially, but as it were through appearance - under the appearance of our slavery, which he wholly assumed.

     The text then continues: «Jonah went down to Joppa to escape to Tarshish.» This is the person who came down: «No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven» (Jn 3,13). Our Lord came down from heaven to earth; God came down to man; the almighty has come down to our servitude. But the Jonah who came down to the ship had to go up for the voyage; so too Christ, after coming down to this world, went up into the ship of the Church through his virtues and miracles.