Today's Gospel (Mt 12:38-42):  Some teachers of the Law and some Pharisees spoke up, «Teacher, we want to see a sign from you». Jesus answered them, «An evil and unfaithful people want a sign, but no sign will be given them except the sign of the prophet Jonah. In the same way that Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the monster fish, so will the Son of Man spend three days and three nights in the depths of the earth. At the judgment, the people of Niniveh will rise with this generation and condemn it, because they reformed their lives at the preaching of Jonah, and here there is greater than Jonah. At the judgment, the Queen of the South will stand up and condemn you. She came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and here there is greater than Solomon».

Today, in the Gospel, we may contemplate how some teachers of the Law and some Pharisees want Jesus to prove his divine origin with some prodigious sign (cf. Mt 12:38). He had previously offered plenty, more than enough to prove not only his provenance from God, but also that He himself was God. But, despite the many miracles made, they had not enough: no matter how many He had made, they would not believe him.

By taking advantage of a prodigious sign from the Old Testament, Jesus, with prophetic emphasis, announces his death, burial and resurrection: «In the same way that Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the monster fish, so will the Son of Man spend three days and three nights in the depths of the earth» (Mt 12:40), and will rise full of life.

The people of Nineveh recovered their friendship with God, through their spiritual rebirth and self-abasement. We, too, through spiritual rebirth, penance and baptism, have been buried with Christ, and for him and in him we live, now and forever, having taken a true “paschal” step: step from death to life, from sin to grace. Free from devil's slavery, we become sons of God. He is “the great prodigy” illustrating our faith and hopes to live with love, as God commands, and to be able to fully possess the Love of God.

A great prodigy, Jesus' Passover, as much as ours, because of our Baptism. Nobody has seen them, for Jesus rose from the Sepulcher full of life, and we rose from sin, full of divine life. We believe in it and we live while we avoid falling in the incredulity of those that want to see to believe, or of those that would like to see the Church without the opacity of all humans that make it. Let the Paschal mystery of Christ that so deeply affects all humans and the whole creation, to be enough for us, for it is the reason of so many “miracles of God's grace”.

God's Mother trusted God's Word, and she did not have to run out to the sepulcher to embalm the body of her Son and to verify the sepulcher empty: she simply believed and she “saw”.