VOICE OF THE LOGOS: REFLECTION/HOMILY FOR MONDAY OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR 1

The Church has always taught that God respects our free will. From the very beginning, He created us not as robots, but as beings capable of choosing. God never forces anyone to serve Him. Adam and Eve were free to obey or disobey, Abraham was free to leave his land or remain, and Mary was free to say “yes” or “no” to the angel. Even Jesus respected human freedom, He never begged Judas to stay, nor stopped the rich young man from walking away. We have always understood this as a sign of divine respect: that God’s love invites, but never imposes. Yet, when I re-read the story of Jonah, something struck me deeply. It looked almost as though God refused to accept Jonah’s “no.” Jonah said he wouldn’t go to Nineveh, yet every event seemed to drag him back to God’s will as seen in the storm, a group of sailors, a giant fish. Everything seemed arranged to make him do what he didn’t want to do. Then I began to ask myself: did God, in this story, override Jonah’s free will? Did He force him into obedience? Or was something deeper going on? Something about the difference between freedom and rebellion? These are the questions the readings invite us to reflect on today.

The first reading from the Book of Jonah takes us right into this tension. Jonah was not a bad man; he was a prophet, already called by God. Historically, the book was written around the 5th century before Christ, after the exile, as Israel was learning again that God’s mercy is bigger than national pride. The story of Jonah was told almost like a parable to show that God’s compassion is for everyone, even the enemies of Israel. When God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh (the capital of Assyria), He was sending him to the people who once oppressed Jonah’s own nation. Jonah’s refusal was not mere laziness; it was bitterness. He didn’t want God to show mercy to his enemies. So, when he boarded a ship to Tarshish, he was not just changing location; he was resisting divine mercy. The text says Jonah fled “from the presence of the Lord.” The Hebrew verb used here, “בָּרַח” (barach), means “to flee or to escape.” But in Jewish understanding, one cannot truly escape God’s presence (cf. Psalm 139:7–10). Jonah’s flight was therefore not geographical but spiritual. He was exercising free will, but against the current of grace. Then came the storm, which was not to cancel his will, but to awaken it. God did not remove Jonah’s freedom; He used creation itself to confront him with the reality of his decision. Inside the fish, Jonah prayed. He freely turned again toward the One he had fled. The fish, then, was not a cage but a mercy. The story shows us that when our freedom runs from God, His love runs faster, not to violate us, but to rescue us.

The responsorial psalm, taken from Jonah’s own prayer in the fish’s belly, becomes a mirror of repentance. “Out of my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me.” The Hebrew word for “distress” is “צָרָה” (tsarah), meaning a tight, narrow, or confined space. Jonah, trapped in darkness, discovers that his freedom without God had become tsarah (a prison of his own making). Sometimes we call our sins “choices,” but soon they become the chains that bind us. Jonah’s prayer reveals that even when we have abused our freedom, God’s mercy can meet us in the deepest pit. He says, “You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas,” but that “deep” becomes the womb of rebirth. What looked like punishment was actually preservation. The psalm shows that God respects our freedom, but He will surround us with mercy until we remember that true freedom is found only in surrender.

In the Gospel, the story of the Good Samaritan puts this lesson in motion. Here we meet another man exercising free will: a lawyer who wants to test Jesus, asking, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus responds with a story that unmasks human excuses. The priest and Levite had the freedom to help the wounded traveller, but they chose to walk away. Their free will became a shield for indifference. The Samaritan, on the other hand, freely chose compassion. In a world where Jews and Samaritans despised each other, his act broke the limits of culture and prejudice. The Gospel of Luke, written around 80 AD, often highlights that divine mercy knows no boundaries. The Greek word used for “compassion” is “σπλαγχνίζομαι” (splagchnizomai), meaning to be moved from the deepest part of the heart, literally, from the gut. It describes an instinctive movement of mercy. The Samaritan’s compassion shows that freedom finds its highest meaning when it mirrors God’s heart. Jonah used his freedom to run away from the suffering of Nineveh; the Samaritan used his freedom to draw near to the suffering of another. The difference is that one misunderstood freedom as independence, while the other lived it as love.

At the end of it all, the question remains: did God disrespect Jonah’s free will? The answer is no. On the other hand, Jonah disrespected the purpose of his own freedom. God never forced him; He simply loved him too much to leave him lost. Every storm in our lives, every crisis that humbles us, may be God’s way of giving us a second chance to say “yes.” Jonah’s story reminds us that divine grace does not cancel human will; it redeems it. The psalm reminds us that God’s mercy can reach even those trapped by their own choices. The Gospel shows us that true freedom is not saying “no” to God’s call, but choosing to love where others choose to pass by. So maybe the question for us is not whether God respects our free will, but whether we respect it enough to use it for what it was created for, which is, to love, to serve, and to obey Him who alone sets us free.