In response to the inquiry by the disciples of Saint John the Baptist, Our Lord directs them, as He has us these past few weeks, to signs to be observed. To know whether it is He Who is to Come, as to know when He is Coming, one must watch for signs.
Signs are things perceptible to the senses that direct attention to other things, and when these other things can be understood, signs have meaning. When that meaning is perceptible to the intellect elevated by faith, the sign is spiritual. Such is the case with the signs Our Lord enumerated today and in past weeks, and with the signs He instituted and entrusted to the Church He established. ‘A Sacrament is a perceptible sign,’ we were taught as children, ‘instituted by Christ to give grace.’ The spiritual realities to which sacramental signs direct our attention may be imperceptible to the senses, but they have meaning to those who believe, for example, that the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ are truly present under the appearance of bread and wine.
Signs come in many forms. As Our Lord Himself tells us today, they can be heard or seen, witnessed, spoken, reported or written. Some are miraculous or unusual; others are part of the ordinary course of events. Some announce, others warn. Not all are noticed or understood by everyone. Faith makes spiritual signs meaningful. Our Lord affirms this frequently by referring to the faith of those He heals. Conversely, Our Lord also laments the little faith that confounds those scandalized by those same signs.
“The sight of so many signs and so many mighty works should have been a source of wonder, and not a stumbling-block,” Saint Gregory the Great comments in the Third Nocturn at Matins. “And yet the unfaithful found these very works a rock of offence.”
For not only do signs come in many forms, but they are encountered in different ways. Some are unavoidable, like those that are to come in the heavens. Others can be missed or ignored. Others need to be watched for or sought. This is why the Church so frequently exhorts, especially during the Advent season: Ecce! Behold! This is why Saint John the Baptist listened, even while in prison, and from there sent disciples to Christ.
But this Sunday and the next we also have examples of other signs sought for different reasons. “A reed shaken with the wind?” continues Saint Gregory. “Here our Lord teacheth not by assertion, but by negation. Now a reed is a thing so made that as soon as the wind bloweth upon it, it bendeth it over toward the opposite quarter. And the fleshly-minded man is like a human reed. As he is praised or blamed so he bendeth himself in the one direction or the other.” Some such signs are the superficial status symbols of worldlings: soft garments and houses of kings, or ephemera of trending trivia and viral whatnots. Other more nefarious signs sought by worldly men include: praise, blame, scandal, controversy, and the like.
Some signs are signs of signs, such as words, which are spoken and written with sounds and symbols that are themselves signs of those words signifying the ideas or realities they mean. In the Second Nocturn at Matins, Saint Jerome gives an example of how faith enlightens the true interpretation of the words written in Holy Scripture:
We, however, understand that the rod out of the root of Jesse signifieth the holy Virgin Mary. She was a clean stem that had as yet put forth no shoot; as we have read above: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son. And the flower we believe to mean the Lord our Redeemer who hath elsewhere compared himself to a flower: I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valley. The Spirit of the Lord then shall rest upon this flower; this flower which shall come forth from the stem and roots of Jesse by means of the Virgin Mary.
Recall how even a doctor learned in the Law who correctly cited the greatest commandments still needed Christ’s help to enlighten him about who was his neighbor. Holy Scripture cannot be understood by studying alone. It is not a source of Faith, but a sign of it, and with other sacred signs part of the deposit of Faith.
Saint Paul describes in today’s Epistle how all of these signs work together so admirably well and how the Faithful cooperate in preparing for the Coming of the Savior and His Kingdom.
May then the God of patience and of comfort grant you to be of one mind towards one another according to Jesus Christ; that, one in spirit, you may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive one another, even as Christ has received you to the honor of God. For I say that Christ Jesus has been a minister of the circumcision in order to show God’s fidelity in confirming the promises made to our fathers, but that the Gentiles glorify God because of His mercy, as it is written.
This unity of faith and worship is itself a sign: unity of faith enlightening the true interpretation of Holy Scripture, unity of worship in the Sacraments instituted by Christ. It a mark of His Church and of the very small remnant left that awaits Him in the hope that, as the prophet Isaias foretells in the First Nocturn at Matins:
He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears: but with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.
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