In Greek, the word Telos refers to the inherent purpose of an individual or an object that ultimately drives their actions or their use. The telos of a knife is to cut things, so it can hardly be considered a knife unless it is being used to cut. The telos of a teacher is to teach, so they can hardly be considered a teacher unless they are teaching. The telos of human beings is to seek and know God our Creator, and we can hardly be considered as embracing our human nature unless we do so. However, our telos is hindered by the disorder of sin. Every human being is at a different point in their journey towards God; as faithful Catholics, we would like to believe that not only are we oriented in the right direction towards Him, we are also close to reaching Him. At the same time, we might believe that others are not only further away from reaching God than us, but also facing the wrong direction and moving away from Him.

It is true that many people are actively moving away from their telos. Still, God seeks after them by different means. In the parable of the Lost Sheep, Jesus affirms that God seeks after those who are lost and rejoices when they are found and returned to the fold. In the Old Testament, God did this by sending prophets to warn them of their errors and to bring them back to God. Many prophets were ignored by those they were sent to protect. The prophet Jonah half-heartedly went after the city of Nineveh, thinking they were too far from God to be saved. However, those in the city listened to Jonah, changed their ways, and reverted back towards God. Amazingly, this bothers Jonah who believes that Nineveh deserved the wrath of God.

This same theme is found in the story of Martha and Mary. Martha works hard to serve Jesus hospitably, while Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to him rather than help Martha. Naturally, Martha is upset that her work for Jesus goes unnoticed while Mary, who does little in terms of service, is praised. It seems unjust. It also seems unjust that a sinful group such as the Ninevites would be so evil, yet could be spared punishment simply by changing their ways while Jonah, who does the work of God, goes unpraised. As lifelong Catholics, we may consider it unjust when others who were moving away from God are automatically brought back into the fold because of a change of heart. God’s mercy towards the sinful is never unjust though. We have no right to come to Him, regardless of our personal piety, because we are all sinners. Yet he invites all of us towards Him because it is our telos. And we should celebrate whenever someone recognizes and actively seeks their telos.

Within Scripture, cities are consistently associated with sin and godlessness, in contrast to the humble background of God’s chosen people. With the large gathering of individuals packed into a small space, bad decisions can immediately bleed into the community at large and spread quickly. The first city was founded by Cain after he killed his brother Abel, the tower of Babel in pre-Babylon was the center of humanity’s pride, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for their evil, and the list goes on. God’s punishment towards cities was never brought about without warning - He used prophets to urge the citizens to change from their ways to prevent destruction. Even within our own spiritual battles, we know that once we have given into evil, it is very difficult to overcome it; naturally, the vast majority of those who were warned of their behavior refused to change and were punished as a result.

There is one single exception to this rule in Scripture. The city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire and at one point the largest city in the world, was a place where wickedness and evil ran rampant. God sent the prophet Jonah to warn the city, but Jonah did so reluctantly considering just how evil the city was. It was also so large that it took Jonah three days to travel through it, warning its citizens. But Nineveh had a sincere conversion and was ultimately spared by God’s punishment. While this seemed unjust to Jonah and he wanted God to still punish them for their old ways, God does not because they were unaware of how to behave in a holy and good manner (they do not know “their right hand from their left”) but were still willing to change when told that they were behaving in a wicked and evil manner. As we fast-forward to the Gospel, Jesus later calls his own generation “evil” and says that, although they demand a sign from God, the only sign they will receive is the sign of Jonah. It is sometimes believed that the sign of Jonah refers to Jesus’ three days in the tomb before his Resurrection, just as Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale. But this sign that Jesus refers to may signify something more than this.

Jonah also spent three days in Nineveh, preaching that the Ninevites must repent, but doing so with great doubt in his heart. One can only imagine how much doubt the Apostles were filled with in those three days between Christ’s death and resurrection. But once Christ rose from the dead, they went everywhere, joyfully sharing this message to everyone they encountered, including pagans and gentiles. The gentiles were those who did not receive the Law from their own cultures, and were therefore in the same situation as the Ninevites, not knowing their right hand from their left. But upon receiving the Good News of the Resurrection, some accepted it and changed their ways, just as the Ninevites did, based only on the message of the disciples. Through Christ, the sign of Jonah is this: God has allowed that His chosen people be those who do His will upon learning of His will. One’s background or past is irrelevant to this conversion. The sign of Jonah is a sign of hope. Following God will protect you from wickedness and evil.

We express our relationship with God by the way we act with our neighbors. It is wonderful to have a deep and active prayer life, but in order to effectively live out that prayer life in a way that authentically glorifies God, we must see God in those around us and treat them accordingly. This is perhaps the most glaring difference between God in His supreme power and us in our sinful state: we are hypocrites who are unworthy of everything we have, while God’s word is decisive with no room for hypocrisy or injustice. As God comes into the world through the person of Jesus Christ, He sets out a model for us that we can follow in which we recognize our unworthiness for the things that have been given to us while at the same time being grateful for them. To focus on this gratitude is to be grateful that others have been given this grace by God as well, and hypocrisy naturally ceases.

There is a temptation in being followers of Christ and worshippers of God to look at the people around us and to compare their mode of worship with ours. When we do this, we do not simply notice the current behavior of our neighbors, but also take into account their past and any transgressions they may have caused in their past. This is the source of being judgmental, and it deforms our soul; we take what is good, namely proper behavior and worship of God, and distort it to compare our own goodness with others. The prophet Jonah does this when he realizes God will not destroy the sinful city of Nineveh because they had a change of heart. God proceeds to indicate to Jonah that He desires Nineveh to follow Him. What is in the past is in the past. What matters is that the city has recognized its evil ways and has abandoned them for the sake of God. 

When we truly consider that God was present to us and talked to us in a substantial way through the person of Christ, it opens up an understanding of how God wants us to approach Him. Prayer is how we communicate with Him, and when asked how to pray, Christ gives us the Our Father. This is how God wants us to speak with Him. Within this prayer is an acknowledgment that we are completely dependent on Him for our “supersubstantial” bread. Part of the stipulations for this petition for this sustenance is that we forgive others in the same way that we desire to be forgiven by God. It is through gratitude of our neighbor and appreciation for their dignity that we can exercise our love for God through others.