A Jesuit friend of mine once made this startling statement: “Signs don’t really work. Don’t look for signs.” If we are fully honest with ourselves, we are not fully convinced that we can base a momentous life decision on a minor detail in our lives that we can easily rationalize into a sign.
Jesus does not offer signs. There was no sign for the King of Nineveh. Jonah preached, and the people, stirred in their hearts toward conversion, repented in sackcloth. In other words, through the urgency and radical nature of their actions, their piety reached the King. The witness offered by the people of Nineveh who felt the need for the Lord’s mercy became the receivers of the Lord’s mercy.
Instead of looking for signs, we can discern. Where is there spiritual joy, deep peace, tears from being so moved, and an increase in faith, hope, and love in our lives? Those are the interior movements of the Holy Spirit Ignatius would have us be attentive to. Those “signs” are often associated by the grace that comes from the Risen Lord at Easter. That’s the sign of Jonah: someone who came back from the grave after being entombed for three days, or, in the case of Jonah, entombed inside a whale.
Waiting faithfully for Easter, may this Lent be free of sensational signs which shortcircuit the graces that could only come from an encounter with Jesus Christ.