Gospel: Luke 12:54-59

 

The Gospel today presents the call on the part of Jesus to learn to read the signs of the times. This was the text which inspired the Pope John XXIII to convoke the Church to be more attentive to the signs of time and to better perceive the calls of the Lord Jesus Christ in the events of the history of humanity.

 

Jesus reports a universal human experience. Everybody in his own country or region, knows how to read the face of the sky and of the earth. Jesus refers to the contemplation of nature since it is one of the most important sources of knowledge and of experience which Jesus himself had of God. It was the contemplation of nature that helped his discovery of new aspects of faith and in the history of His people. 

 

Saint Augustine said that nature, creation, is the first book that God wrote. Through nature, God speaks to us. Sin mixes up the letters of the book of nature, and because of this, we have not succeeded in reading God’s message printed in the things of nature and in the facts of life. 

 

The Bible is the second book of God, it was written not to occupy or substitute life but to help us interpret nature and life and to learn again to discover the calls of our Lord Jesus Christ in the facts of life. 

 

This is why Jesus advises to seek reconciliation before it is too late! When the time of judgment comes, it will be too late. When there is still time try to change life, behavior, and way of thinking, and seek to act justly.