Ba’utha is a three-day liturgical season in the Chaldean Church commemorating the prophet Jonah’s visit to Nineveh. It’s a penitential season where we fast and pray for God’s forgiveness and mercy. It takes place three weeks before Lent begins (most of us think of it as kind of a “warm up” for Lent), which means this year it happened on February 3-5.

The Chaldean bishops of North America decided to repeat Ba’utha this year to pray for mercy during the current pandemic, so we’ll be posting and live-streaming the prayers at noon (San Diego time) on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (March 23-25). Note that the fasting usually practiced during Ba’utha will not be required (we’re going through enough) but everyone is encouraged to participate with any prayer and fasting they see fit.

I’ll be posting my English translation of the prayers, and maybe some recordings of the chants as well, as those days happen. Today as an introduction, here’s the Bible study I did on the book of Jonah the week before Ba’utha 1.0 this year:

Just realized I’m running out of Bible study recordings to post. I’ll have to get creative. Let me know if you have any ideas.