Saint Jonah of Gath-Hepher

Proud of its extent, gorged with the riches of Asia of which it was the mistress, Nineveh had given itself over to the corruption too common in large cities. The cry of its disorders had risen to Him who, from the height of heaven, contemplates all the children of men. Vengeance was near; mercy forestalled it and sent a missionary to Nineveh to preach penance there.

Never before had a prophetic mission taken on such a character. Elijah and Elisha had visited Damascus to carry the order of Jehovah there. But Damascus was only a vassal city in the immense system of the Assyrian empire, and besides, the two prophets were called there for purely international interests, which concerned the people of Israel specifically. Jonah is sent to Nineveh for a higher purpose. He is going to speak to this idolatrous capital in the name of a God who is unknown to it: it is the taking possession of human empires by Jehovah.

His word was therefore heard by Jonah, son of Amittai and native of G ath-hepher, despite Jonas, fils d’Amathi Old Testament prophet sent to the Gentiles in Nineveh. the censures of the cl Gethorent Presumed birthplace and burial site of the prophet. ergy. In 1574, the King of France, Henry III, enrolled in this Order with his entire court. It has not been a century since such fanatics were still found in Italy and in the south of France.

hepher, which is believed to be the same city as Jotapata, in Palestine, in the tribe of Naphtali. "Arise," the Lord said to him, "and go to Nineveh, the great city. Preach penance to it, because its crimes have risen up to me." Terrified by such a mission, Jonah arose, ran to Joppa, found a Phoenician ship that was s ettin Joppé Port where Jonah embarked to flee his mission. g sail for Tarshish, paid the price of his passage, and emb Tharsis Distant destination to which Jonah attempts to flee. arked for this distant destination, thus fleeing from the divine order he did not have the courage to fulfill. When the vessel had left the shore, the Lord unleashed a furious wind upon the waves; the storm broke out in all its violence, and the ship risked being submerged. The sailors, in their fright, implored their gods and threw all the ship's cargo into the sea to lighten it. Meanwhile, Jonah, having gone down into the interior of the vessel immediately after his embarkation, suspected nothing and slept a deep sleep. The pilot approached him: "What," he said, "you sleep in the midst of this storm! Arise, and invoke upon us the mercy of the God you adore. Perhaps He will deign to remember us, for we are going to perish." However, the danger grew from minute to minute. At that time, and in memory of Cain, the first murderer, men believed that a great peril was the sign of the presence of a great culprit. The sailors therefore said among themselves: "Let us cast lots to know who is the criminal who brings this calamity upon our heads!" The lot was cast, and it fell upon Jonah. "Who are you?" the sailors asked him; "what is your homeland? where are you going? what have you done, finally, to provoke the wrath of heaven?" — "I am a Hebrew," replied Jonah. "Jehovah, the God I adore, is the one who created the earth and the waves, and I have deserved His anger." He then told them of the mission with which he had been charged by the Lord, and his disobedience. "Why have you acted in this way?" they said to him; "what shall we do now to appease the furious waves?" For the sea was still swelling and the waves were passing over the ship. "Take me," Jonah said to them, "and throw me into the sea, it will calm down afterwards, for I know that this frightful storm has been unleashed against me." However, the sailors could not resolve themselves to this cruel extremity; they bent over their oars and strove to steer the ship toward the coast. But it was in vain; the sea redoubled its fury and the hurricane lifted the waves up to the sky. Then the sailors made this prayer to the Lord: "Jehovah, we beseech you, do not let us perish because of this culprit, and do not let the responsibility for his death fall upon us! It is You who have willed it." Then they took Jonah and cast him into the waves. At that very instant, the wind fell and the sea became calm. In their fright, these men offered a sacrifice to Jehovah and made vows to Him that they were to fulfill when they had reached land.

However, the Lord had provided, near the ship, the presence of an enormous fish, which, at the moment Jonah fell into the sea, opened its gigantic jaw and swallowed him alive. For three days and three nights, Jonah remained in this ambulatory prison. In the belly of the sea monster, he implored the mercy of the God he had offended. 'Lord,' he said, 'the depths of the abyss have opened to receive me, you have plunged me into the heart of the Ocean, and the chasms of the waters surround me. I have deserved to be erased from the number of the living, and yet, I retain the hope of it, I shall see your holy Temple again. The wave envelops me like a cloak, the abyss above my head, the abyss below me, everywhere the avenging wave. I have descended deeper than the roots of the mountains; impassable barriers separate me from the abode of the living, and yet, O my God, you will pull me from this foul dungeon, and you will restore to me salvation and life!' Thus prayed Jonah, and the Lord commanded the sea monster to approach the land, and the docile fish cast Jonah back onto the shore.

Then the voice of the Lord was heard again. "Arise," repeated Jehovah, "take the road to Nineveh, the great city, and fulfill among its inhabitants the mission with which I have charged you." Jonah therefore arose, and obeying the divine command this time, he arrived at Nineveh. Now, as we have said, this capital was an immense city of three days' journey. The Prophet entered it, traversed a third of it on the first day, crying out as he passed: "Forty more days and Nineveh shall be destroyed!" The inhabitants believed the word of God and resolved to appease His anger. The king of Nineveh wished to hear Jonah. Touched by his warnings and his threats, he rose from his throne, stripped off the insignia of his dignity, clothed himself in the sackcloth of penance, and sat in ashes. By his orders, the princes of his court published throughout the city the proclamation of a solemn fast. "Let neither men nor animals take any food during this day," they said; "let the flocks be led neither to the pastures nor to the fountains. Let men clothe themselves in the sackcloth of penance; let them implore the divine mercy with all their heart; let them abandon the path of crime; let them purify their hands of all works of iniquity! Who knows if God will not deign to forgive our repentance, forget His rigors, and spare our lives?" And God saw their penance, He accepted this sincere conversion; His clemency prevailed over His justice, and He did not wish to inflict upon the penitents the punishments He had announced to the guilty.

However, the soul of the Prophet was prey to the deepest sorrow. He saw that his prediction would not be fulfilled, and, in his despair, he said to the Lord: 'Great God! Was this not what made me resist your command, while I was still in Judea, my homeland? It was for this reason that I wanted to flee to Tarshish, for I know that you are the God of clemency and mercy. Patience and kindness triumph in your counsels, and the malice of men serves only to provide you with the joy of forgiving. Now, therefore, Lord, I pray you, take back my soul; death has become sweeter to me than a dishonored life.' Jehovah said to his servant: 'Do you think your complaint is just?' And he added nothing to this answer. However, Jonah left the city and came to rest on an eminence from where he wanted to observe what the fate of Nineveh would be. He sat in the shade of a shrub whose foliage, provided by the kindness of God, protected him against the heat of the sun. Now, God permitted a worm to bite the root of the shrub in the morning, and the foliage withered. The burning wind of the south and the devouring rays of the star of the day soon overwhelmed Jonah. He complained of this intolerable heat and regretted the beneficial shade he had enjoyed the day before. The Lord then said to him: 'You would have wanted to save the life of this shrub that you had neither watered nor planted, which a night saw born and a night saw die; and should I not have spared Nineveh, the great city, where at this moment breathe more than one hundred and twenty thousand children who do not yet know how to distinguish their right hand from their left, not to mention countless herds, innocent creatures, who hold their life from me?'

There is no class of monuments in Christian antiquity where the story of Jonah is not reproduced. It is found in the bas-reliefs of sarcophagi, on sepulchral stones, in the frescoes of the catacombs, on metal medallions, on lamps, on engraved stones, on the bases of glass cups, and on diptychs.

Jonah is represented sometimes being introduced by one of the crew into the mouth of the monster, sometimes being cast out by this monster onto the beach, sometimes lying or sitting under the shade from where he awaits the fate reserved for Nineveh, and finally sometimes resting sadly, either under the withered shrub or without any shelter. Quite often these four phases of his story are brought together in the same picture, as in a fresco in the cemetery of S aint Callixtus, where they cimetière de Saint-Calliste Site containing early Christian frescoes of Jonah. are seen distributed into four distinct compartments.

In all the painted, sculpted, or engraved pictures, Jonah is in a state of complete nudity, except perhaps in a curious fresco in the cemetery of Saint Callixtus where he is dressed in a tunic and elegantly draped in a cloak or pallium. He is lying down, slightly raised on his elbow and under the rays of the sun represented by a radiated head, according to the sacred text: "The sun beat down on the head of Jonah, and he fainted." Elsewhere, he is seen placing his hand on his head to protect himself from the heat by which he is keenly inconvenienced. We have a beautiful sarcophagus, taken from the Vatican cemetery, where the storm, which was the cause of the Prophet's misfortune, is represented by a winged half-figure emerging from the cranny of a mountain and blowing with fury upon the ship. A bas-relief shows, at the prow, next to this scene, a young man who seems to be shedding tears. Perhaps this is Jonah himself, seen at the moment when his sentence has just been pronounced. On a sepulchral stone of the catacombs, one sees Jonah, in the figure of a young child, alone, standing in the presence of the monster with the gaping mouth; he carries his hand to his eyes, he is weeping, and has the attitude of a frightened little child.

## CULT AND RELICS. — WRITINGS.

The Roman Martyrology indicates the city o f Gath, in P Geth ou Gath Presumed birthplace and burial site of the prophet. alestine (tribe of Dan), as the place where the prophet Jonah was buried. Indeed, Saint Jerome inform s us that in saint Jérôme Father of the Church and biographical source for Amand. his time this tomb was still shown in the city of Gath. The Turks confirm the opinion of Saint Jerome, for they have built a mosque in this place under which the Prophet's mausoleum is shown. According to the testimony of Adrichomius, Quaresmius, Eugène Ruger, etc., several cities in Europe may possess relics of Jonah; we are in no way obliged to defend or attack the authenticity of these beliefs. In Nineveh, the current Orientals also claim to possess the sepulcher of Jonah, but the probabilities favor the tomb in Palestine.

If the Church has always rendered a particular cult to this holy Prophet, it is because it has always regarded him as one of the most striking figures of Jesus Christ. His story is frequently cited by the holy Fathers as prefiguring the resurrection of the Savior (and with every reason, since the Savior had applied it to Himself), and also the universal resurrection, essential truths upon which it was important to insist, because they were violently attacked by the enemies of the Christian faith, as we learn from Saint Augustine.

Jonah began to prophesy in the year of the world 8479, during the reign of Jeroboam, second son of Joash and king of Israel. He is the only one of the Prophets to have b een sent Jéroboam King of Israel, contemporary of the prophet Amos. to the Gentiles. His book is mainly historical, and, in the judgment of Saint Augustine, this Prophet did not announce the Savior so much by his speeches as by his works. Some authors have doubted that Jonah composed the work that bears his name, because he is never spoken of there except in the third person; but this reason is not sufficient to take away from this Prophet the account of an event that no one could have done better than he, and which has been attributed to him for so many centuries.

We have used, to compose this biography, the General History of the Church, by Abbé Derrou; the Lives of the Saints, by Abbé Churlocher; the Saints of the Old Testament, by Beillet; the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, by Abbé Martigny; the History of Sacred and Ecclesiastical Authors, by Dom Coillier; the Holy Places, by Mgr Mislin; and the Bible under the Bible, by Abbé Guinet.