The Symbolic Three-Day Fast

Jonah prophecy speaks to us more with symbols than with words. The Church sees within this book’s simple story an icon of Christ symbolically represented. God destroyed the old World by flood, when the people of Noah’s day persisted resolutely in their evil. Likewise, Nineveh certainly deserved to be destroyed because of its great sin and evil. But the infinitely merciful, compassionate, ever-loving God does not truly desire the death of the sinner, but that he should repent and live. The word of the LORD came to Jonah to go to Nineveh (symbolizing the world) to repentance and Nineveh’s salvation by a sacrificial washing away of the people’s sins in yet another kind of flood (death and destruction).

‘THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS’ setting the work of creation. During the great Flood at the time of Noah, A DOVE, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, was sent out to pass over the waters and return as a sign of safety and life to Noah and God had begun to ‘recreate’ the earth. On the shores of the Red Sea, God’s creative work of salvation for Israelites, began, When He caused the sea to go back by a Strong East Wind all that Night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. In the same way, God began to prepare the means of Nineveh’s salvation, be sending OUT A GREAT WIND INTO THE SEA, A MIGHTY TEMPEST. Jonah (meaning dove), was a “dove”, which as in Noah’s case, would become a sign of life and safety for the Ninevites. The image of “wind into the sea” is a clear sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit of God creatively renewing His creation. Thus, we find an archetype of CHRIST’S MISSION OF SALVATION.

Our Lord Jesus Christ revealed Himself to Israel at His Baptism. “He went up straight out of the water, and the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him” (Matt. 3: 16). The symbols here signal that our Lord is manifesting Himself not just as a Redeemer but actually as a “Renewer” of His creation foreshadowing God’s ultimate salvation of this world. St. John the Baptist and Forerunner witnessed the meaning of these images of this world’s ultimate salvation “by water and the Spirit.” In this dramatic passage, God depicts to us an icon of Christ Himself. The mariners throwing Jonah into the sea, continued to strive by their own limited means to save themselves. But at last, exhausted, they relented and obeyed the will of the Lord and trusted God. If the ship (emblematic of the Church) perishes, the city (symbolic of the world) certainly cannot survive the storm of destruction their sin has brought. Only the sacrifice of one man can save them both, the first willing participated in the sacrifice ordained by God and the latter heeded God’s call to repentance and accepting the benefits of that sacrifice. 

“Almighty God, loved His own who are in the world and gave Himself up for our salvation unto death. Jesus descended into Hades through the Cross.” Jonah’s emergence from the fish after three days and nights foreshadows archetypally Christ’s Resurrection. Jonah, entered the fish had died and he strikes the shores as a man transformed as a “new creature“. He gives us all the necessary elements: the wind sent out into the sea, the three days’ sojourn in a watery Hades, and the coming forth of a “new man” from the grave. All of these types are obvious in their symbolic meaning to a man as well versed in the Scriptures as Nicodemus.  “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. (Jn. 3: 5).

For this reason, our Lord Jesus Christ fasted in the desert forty days and nights on our behalf. The people of Nineveh fasted together as one, so do we together with one another in Christ. In Him, we form a sacred community of believers who are the Body of Christ. This Body is indeed a “Communion of Saints”, Saints perfected in their striving done in unity with the Head of the Body. Both Jesus’ Baptism and Jonah’s watery descent were followed by fasts of the sacred number of forty days. The relationship between Baptism and fasting and the analogy between the “Sign of Jonah” and the mystery of salvation in Christ’s death and Resurrection inspired the Church to place the Fast of Nineveh between the Feast of Epiphany and Great Lent.

Jonah had been cramped, with no space to move or lie down and there wasn’t any. He must have certainly thought he was going to die. And what did he do? Well, he prayed on his knees. Very many people know that there is a God, but like Jonah, they run away. And like Jonah, very many people pray to God in their despair! We, like Jonah, only too easily turn from participation in God’s mysteries of grace and loving-kindness to descend once again to lap the vomit of our sinfulness! Like Jonah as well, we are ever free, by God’s design, to renounce repentance at any time, even after receiving great spiritual gifts of His favor. We who call ourselves Christians really cannot stand in judgment of poor Jonah.  We also fail to live up to our calling in “the Sign of Jonah.”

God presents us with an icon of Christ in the Book of Jonah. He also shows us ourselves in the people of Nineveh, the ship’s mariners, and even Jonah. Whether in the world, the ark of the Church, whether abject evildoer or blessed Saint, we are all of us, sinners, perpetually in need of renewal in the “Sign of Jonah”, the glorious restorative power of the Resurrection in Baptism. The Church invites us to fast together in the Body of Christ, not to prove our worthiness or to make restitution, but to become one with Christ in His mystery of salvation. The Church exhorts us to “be transformed by the renewing of (our) mind, that (we) may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12: 2). Hence this fast is of Mystical significance to the Church.

The Church devotes so much attention to such a short book written by such an obscure and disobedient prophet? A story of an unwilling and rebellious prophet, with a single reference to him in 2 Kings 14: 25, who gets swallowed by a fish when he tries to escape doing God’s will carry such a profound meaning?