Want to avert chastisement? Repent like a Ninevite

John Martin, "The Fall of Nineveh." Wikicommons.

Can’t we who believe in God, who listen to His true saints and prophets sent in the modern day — can’t we do like the people of Nineveh? Of course we can! And St. Faustina gave to us some of the greatest ways in the treasury of the Church to do so: the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

By Chris Sparks

We get a lot of mail from some of you who want to discern the contours of the future. 

Will there be a chastisement from God in our lifetimes? 

When? 

How bad will it be? 

What can we do about it?

Saints and prophets
It makes sense. The Marian Fathers have been entrusted with the official proclamation of the Divine Mercy message and devotion, after all. It was Pope St. John Paul II who told the Marian Fathers: “Be apostles of Divine Mercy under the maternal and loving guidance of Mary.” They’ve been faithfully following his instructions ever since. 

Marian Press publishes St. Faustina’s Diary, as well as many pieces of literature explaining and expanding on the Divine Mercy message and devotion. This is one of the single biggest (both physically and metaphorically) pieces of approved private revelation in the history of the Church. And St. Faustina does write about dramatic moments of spiritual combat, signs of the end, and other extraordinary things. She certainly is a prophet for our times and all times, until the end of time.

I can understand why people looking for details on Heaven’s response to the sins of the present age might turn to Faustina and the Marian Fathers. But there’s one thing that a lot of this concern doesn’t quite take into account: We are given prophecy to encourage us to change the future, not so that we know of some inescapable doom from fate.

God makes us free
As then-Cardinal Ratzinger reminded us in his official commentary on the third secret of Fatima:

The angel with the flaming sword on the left of the Mother of God recalls similar images in the Book of Revelation. This represents the threat of judgement which looms over the world. Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems pure fantasy: man himself, with his inventions, has forged the flaming sword. The vision then shows the power which stands opposed to the force of destruction — the splendour of the Mother of God and, stemming from this in a certain way, the summons to penance. In this way, the importance of human freedom is underlined: the future is not in fact unchangeably set, and the image which the children saw is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can be changed. Indeed, the whole point of the vision is to bring freedom onto the scene and to steer freedom in a positive direction. The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction (Message of Fatima, “Theological Commentary,” An attempt to interpret the “secret” of Fatima).

Elsewhere, he explains the true purpose of prophecy: 

[P]rophecy in the biblical sense does not mean to predict the future but to explain the will of God for the present, and therefore show the right path to take for the future. A person who foretells what is going to happen responds to the curiosity of the mind, which wants to draw back the veil on the future. The prophet speaks to the blindness of will and of reason, and declares the will of God as an indication and demand for the present time. In this case, prediction of the future is of secondary importance (Message of Fatima, “Theological Commentary,” Public Revelation and private revelations - their theological status, 2).

The future isn’t fixed. Chastisement isn’t guaranteed in our lifetimes. The more warnings we get from Heaven, the more we ought to be seeking to change what’s to come. 

The sign of Jonah
Scripture shows us that this is possible. We see this most clearly in the Book of Jonah:

Jonah began his journey through the city, and when he had gone only a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles, no man or beast, no cattle or sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. Man and beast alike must be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; they all must turn from their evil way and from the violence of their hands. Who knows? God may again repent and turn from his blazing wrath, so that we will not perish.” When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out (Jonah 3:4-10).

Jonah was a true prophet, and yet the success of his preaching wasn’t followed by the visible fulfillment of his prophecy of chastisement. Instead, the power of his prophetic witness led to the people of Nineveh to make acts of reparation.

Sit with that.

To an outside observer, it would look like Jonah had failed. Jonah himself was furious that the people of Nineveh were spared.

And yet God’s purposes were achieved. The wicked city of Nineveh turned to Him, repenting of their wickedness, and begging His mercy. 

Clearly they had justly merited condemnation. Indeed, they’d apparently merited destruction. But they listened to the word of the Lord mediated to them by a Jewish prophet, a foreigner, a member of an oppressed people. That was enough to save them.

Repent like a Ninevite
Can’t we do the same? Can’t we who believe in God, who listen to His true saints and prophets sent in the modern day — can’t we do like the people of Nineveh?

Of course we can! And St. Faustina gave to us some of the greatest ways in the treasury of the Church to do so. Look at the words of the Divine Mercy Chaplet:

Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your Dearly Beloved Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

We are acknowledging our sinfulness. We are prayerfully, spiritually offering God the greatest form of reparation and atonement available to us: His Eucharistic Son. And we are asking mercy, not just on ourselves, but on the whole world — on all those who don’t listen to the Word of God, sent through Public Revelation, amplified by His anointed (the bishops and priests), His saints, and His prophets.

Consider also the extraordinary promises attached to the Sacred Heart devotion, especially the Great Promise of the First Fridays:

I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that my all powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays in nine consecutive months the grace of final perseverance; they shall not die in my disgrace, nor without receiving the sacraments. My divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.

And at Fatima, Our Lady also gave us an extraordinarily powerful way to make reparation for the sins, blasphemies, and outrages committed against her Immaculate Heart: the First Saturdays devotion.

She also called on us to pray the Rosary daily for peace in the world, and practice devotion to her Immaculate Heart alongside devotion to the Sacred Heart of her Son.

What better work of mercy to perform than to make reparation and so open the door to a better world, one more conducive to entering Heaven, for ourselves, our children, our godchildren, or our grandchildren?

New year, spiritual renewal
So in this New Year, let us continue our practice and promotion of the Divine Mercy message and devotion, knowing that we are helping avert chastisement and convert the world. Let us honor the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, especially by participating in First Friday and First Saturday devotions. And let us strive to do the will of God in this life, knowing that we will be preparing ourselves for the next.

Pray for me, that I may practice what I preach. I’ll pray for you.
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