What are the “signs of the times?” It is a phrase that is central to understanding the documents of Vatican Council II, especially Gaudium et Spes, The Church in the Modern World. “Signs of the Times” is not a new concept within the Church, Scripture, or life. In fact, one way to look at today’s Scriptures is through the lens of a theme question: “Does God read the signs of the times?” And the related question: “How do we read them?”
What is meant by “signs of the times?” There can be debate about that, but, generally, it means what happens because of some change in way of life or history.
Signs of the Times in the Desert Deuteronomy 18:15-20
The Hebrew Scripture reading for today comes from middle of the Torah—what God said to Moses on the mountain after the 10 Commandments. It is fascinating to page through chapters 12-26 of Deuteronomy and think of yourself as an Israelite in the Sinai desert. You have left Egypt where you were born a slave. You left in a cloud of miracles. God is clearly leading you. But where are you going? What will life be like in the “Promised Land?” Your environment now doesn’t look very promising.
You are “YHWH’s people.” What does that mean? Chapters 12-26 of Deuteronomy give a LOT of very practical rules that fill out how the 10 Commandments were meant to be lived at that time. They cover all kinds of practical problems: how do you worship? What do you eat? How do you handle the practicalities of marriage? What do you do when you have a civil disagreement?
Today’s brief selection answers a very important question: “As life goes on, how does God lead us?” The answer here is: “A prophet like me [Moses] will the LORD your God raise up for you from among your own kin.” After God says this, there is a very interesting statement, perhaps very relevant to our figuring out the “signs of the times.” God says, “This is exactly what you requested from the LORD your God…when you said ‘Let us not again hear the voice of the LORD our God, nor see his great fire any more, lest we die.”
Interesting. God is in relationship with this people he has chosen. He hears what they say. He adjusts. They are scared of direct voice of God, so God will read the signs of the times. He will speak through prophets and detailed directions for living.
It is interesting: God reads the signs of the times and adjusts HOW HE REVEALS himself.
Walter Brueggemann, a Hebrew scripture scholar, has written several books about how God formed a people for himself in the ways that he developed a relationship with them in the desert. Among them are Deliver Us: Salvation and the Liberating God of the Bible, Delivered Out of Bondage, and Delivered Into Covenant. While I don’t remember Brueggemann actually using the phrase “signs of the times,” all three of those books describe how God mixed solution to practical problems with revelation with relationship to MOVE his people from bondage to the freedom of living in relationship with a living, paying-attention God.
If you are interested in how God did that and might be working to do that with us, you might take one of those books as Lenten reading and prayer material.
God continued to speak to his people to help them read the signs of the times through the Law and the prophets until Jesus came.
Signs of the Times as Jesus begins His Ministry Mark 1:21-28.
John the Baptist was the last prophet for the Israelite people. Mark told us last week that he has now been arrested. The “signs of the times” move from God speaking through prophets to God speaking through Jesus. Jesus is working within normal Jewish practice. He is teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. He speaks with authority—like the prophets did. But now he is also doing something new. There is a NEW SIGN of the times. Jesus is casting out demons. He is battling evil head on—not just in the sins of people or the wrongs of society or rules for living, but in direct conflict with the power of evil (Satan and accomplices) to enter into people and do harm.
The people of Capernaum notice the sign of the times in Jesus, “What is this?” they asked. “A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
With interest you might note that not all the people were open to this new sign of the times in Jesus. This is Chapter 1 of Mark. In Chapter 2, Jesus’ begins to struggle with the trust of the people as some scribes of Capernaum ask, “Why does this man talk this way? He commits blasphemy!” (Mark 2:7)
From a view of history, we could look at when Jesus came and conclude that God saw/created the “Pax Romana” that made it the right time for God to become incarnate and become one of us. We also read Chapter 1 of Mark with a knowledge of the whole book—that Jesus teaches and struggles and works miracles (like what God did as the Israelites left Egypt), but that is not all: he dies, rises from the dead, ascends to heaven, and sends the Holy Spirit to be God-with-us for the rest of history.
It had been hard for the people of Israel to follow God by believing prophets. So God sent a new sign of the times: Jesus, His Son–God in the flesh. Then, after the ascension, Jesus sent another sign of new times: The Church.
Signs of the Times in the Early Church I Corinthians 7:32-35
These verses follow immediately after last week’s verses that speak about the “signs of the times,” namely that “time is running out.” Last week Paul told the Corinthians to not focus on family life. This week he seems to carry it further: if you aren’t married, don’t get married. Give yourself totally to spreading the Gospel. Paul and the other apostles thought Jesus would return and end time very soon.
This names an important point: Saints—apostles—early Christians MISINTERPRETED the signs of the times. They did not have the big picture that God had.
Nonetheless, God read the times and continued to adjust by creating within the Church activities that adjusted to events and changes in the world.
Paul’s advice to the Corinthians soon took on a different meaning. They are foundation words for the development of religious orders: monks and nuns, people who live in community to totally serve the Lord. By the 2nd century many people were leaving home, family, and local church to go to the Egyptian desert—a new sign of the times. Then, in the 5th century, St. Benedict and his more practical Rule responded to the sign of the times that was the fall of Rome to create monasteries and convents all over Europe. Those monasteries and convents preserved learning and created ways for villages and country sides of ordinary people to learn and live Christian faith through the Dark Ages.
The story goes on. Signs of the times around the year 1000 fostered mendicant orders as cities formed. Then there were the signs of the times of the industrial revelation, the development of nations….it goes on and on.
For Us
For me, these readings are reassuring. God pays attention. God lives and works in and through history. God responds to the signs of the times and finds ways to reveal himself to us as times change. When times change, God adjusts his methods (not his message.)
What are the signs of the times now? How do I respond?
While I admit I think about that a lot and have read perspectives about it across the gamut of current buzz within Catholic media, I will not give in to the temptation to think I could speak with authority about that.
But the Church has spoken about it–and what the Church said in Vatican II was neither to the far left or the far right. Not radical. But very thought provoking.
I will close with some opening paragraphs of Gaudium et Spes, including the paragraph that includes the phrase “signs of the times.”
From the beginning of Gaudium et Spes
1. The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.
2. Hence this Second Vatican Council, having probed more profoundly into the mystery of the Church, now addresses itself without hesitation, not only to the sons of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to the whole of humanity. For the council yearns to explain to everyone how it conceives of the presence and activity of the Church in the world of today.
4. To carry out such a task, the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other. We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics. Some of the main features of the modern world can be sketched as follows.
Prayer
Lord, I thank You that You read the signs of every time, every culture, every age. You read the signs and You send into the world Your voice, Your word, Your wisdom. Yet, Lord, today there are so many voices, and it is hard to know Your Voice. Yet You have given the Holy Spirit to the Church and each of us who are baptized. Help me to recognize the Holy Spirit and follow You. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
I highly recommend reading at least the Introduction to Gaudium et Spes. It can be found here.
