Signs in the Heavens

Signs, signs, everywhere, signs, blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind...

So sang the Five Man Electrical Band in their 1970 anti-establishment ballad, whose lyrics are clearly anti-signs, at least those that tell you ‘what to do’ or, more to the point, what not to do.

Presuming they ever arrived in one piece at their concerts, the five men of said band would realize that there is nothing wrong with signs in themselves; in fact, we could not live without them.  Road signs, exit signs; our words are ‘signs’ of our thoughts; our bodies, signs of our feelings; our houses, our books, our facial expressions, the sacraments of the Church, all of them signs.

Then there are the ‘signs’, the great portents, often in the sky, eclipses and northern lights; but they may be on or under the Earth, as in hurricanes and earthquakes. The host of the CBC program Quirks and Quarks, Bob MacDonald, is flabbergasted and frustrated (one could hear the signs of latent anger and dismay even through the radio), that anyone would now dare deny the reality of anthropogenic ‘climate change’ given the recent spate of severe weather in the Caribbean. The signs are so obvious!

Well, to some.  Count me amongst the doubters, or, as the term goes, deniers.  For the greatest giver of signs is God Himself, the Lord of all, Whom even the ‘wind an sea’ obey, without hesitation or complaint.  And He does not need excess carbon to remind us of our frailty.  In fact, I think He rejoices in carbon, as found in the creation He has made great and good and beautiful.

Today the constellations and planets are aligning in such a way that seems to fulfill Revelations 12, with a ‘woman’ (Virgo) crowned with twelve stars (Leo, with the three planets, Mercury, Mars and Venus); the Moon will be ‘under her feet’, and the planet Jupiter, undergoing (apparent) retrograde motion, seemed to enter the ‘womb’ of the Virgin last November (2016), and will now exit, roughly the time of human gestation.

Hmm.  Should we worry?  Definitely not.  Free us from all anxiety, as we pray at each Mass. Signs from God are usually given to remind us of our need for conversion, that our lives, and this world, are passing away, that the time for judgement is at hand, whether that means the Apocalypse, which will indeed arrive someday, preceded by various signs in the heavens; or our own private ‘apocalypse’, which can happen anytime.   Earthquakes come and go in seconds, with one’s whole world quite literally collapsing. We should all be ready, at every moment, for that meeting with Christ, our lamps lit and loins girded.

So rejoice, for the time of our redemption is close at hand, one way, one day, or another.

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