“Then he said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “There will be rain,” and it happens. And when the south wind blows, you say, “There will be heat,” and it happens.”
In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus draws our attention to the human ability to read signs. It is a gift from God. Man has a talent for observation. He notices and records various connections. He is interested in an event’s causes, signs, and consequences. We could define a sign as something that indicates the event itself. For example, people living in Palestine knew that when a cloud appears in the west, it will rain. We are also familiar with such signs. For example, a circle around the moon, or red dawns. Or when we see smoke rising somewhere, we say: Something is burning there. And we say this although we do not see the fire.
It is beneficial when a person learns to read the signs of nature. The Lord Jesus does not reproach us for this ability; on the contrary, he rebukes our unwillingness to read the signs. Reluctance is not inability, and that is precisely where sin lies. It is a kind of refusal to see the truth. This unwillingness of ours concerns two areas. First of all, it is the traces of God in nature. In the natural sciences, we find traces of brilliant wisdom everywhere. We also discover traces of goodness.
When a person looks at himself, he must conclude, “I am brilliantly constructed,” but at the same time he must admit, “I did not construct myself. With my science, I only discover the work of my brilliant originator and constructor. After all, every cell of the human body is infinitely better constructed than the most modern computer. Each cell has, in an amazingly small space, perhaps a fraction of mm², a memory, a library, programs, a processor, and even an input and output device that can not only send copies of files and programs but also create its own copy. In other words, it is a PC with the ability to reproduce.
And in the human body, these cellular computers are interconnected by a network much more complex than the Internet. And the answer must be guessed. Our faith does not hang in the air; we only need to guess our knowledge. Modern man, to avoid bowing down and thanking his Creator, invented the miraculous word “nature.” Nature did that! But if nature does sensible things, it must itself be sensible; if nature can produce a person, it must itself be personal; and if nature can ignite consciousness in a person, it must itself be conscious. No one can give what it does not have.
If I woke up, like the Janko from the fairy tale, and found that in the room where I went to sleep in the evening, everything was suddenly ready for breakfast in the morning, I probably would not say to myself, “It did it by itself!” But like him, I would shout: “Is anyone here?”
And yet we have woken up to a world in which everything is miraculously prepared for our survival and our satisfaction. Unfortunately, we often start looking for that unknown benefactor only when some of that goodness disappears from the table. When we get sick, when someone dear to us dies… Modern quantum physics says that the material world lies in the force field of consciousness. Unlike the materialism of the previous era, it claims that consciousness, that is, Spirit, is primary, and matter is secondary.
What would a world without consciousness actually be like? It would be a world similar to unconsciousness. Let’s try to imagine, at least for a moment, that there is no consciousness in this world. Imagine that you do not feel, see, hear, or even know anything, and cannot imagine anything. Try to imagine that you cannot even imagine anything. Our imagination still provides everything a sense, but if all consciousness were extinguished, matter would lose its sense, value, and reason for existence. The sense and value of matter are in our awareness. These are some of God’s traces in this world. When we walk on them, we will discover Him.
However, an even more significant and vivid trace is imprinted on our soul. And the Lord Jesus draws attention to this trace in the next verse. “Hypocrites, you know how to judge the appearance of the earth and of the sky. How is it that you do not know how to judge the present time? Why do you not judge for yourselves what is just?” Why do you not judge for yourselves what is just! A person has a sense of good and justice in his conscience. I even dare to say that he has a sense of God within him.
The Lord Jesus says in the Gospel according to St. John: “And everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. “Where can we hear the Father’s voice? That voice of God the Father is our conscience. God placed the Word of God in the human heart at creation. The Word of God is present in our innermost being, and if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that Jesus speaks in harmony with our conscience, speaking from the depths of our hearts.
Only those who respect and heed the voice of their conscience can come to Christ. But whoever lives according to their conscience is able to open themselves to Christ and to his saving intervention. They can recognize Christ as the Word of God through whom all things were created. We all carry him within us as our innermost being, as our most hidden desire for bliss, for beauty, for truth, and for a full life. When an unbeliever encounters the proclamation of Jesus and is at least somewhat honest with himself, he must conclude that everything Jesus teaches lies at the deepest depths of his heart. Jesus reveals to us, as it were, from the outside, the Word through which we were created and for which we were created. He reveals to the senses and reason what is already in our heart. Man can recognize God in Jesus. About the same way I read about it in a book.
I don’t remember the author of the book, or rather, his name is difficult to remember. He was a traveler who wished and eventually succeeded in living for some time among the natives on the island of Fatuhiva in Oceania. He himself was a Protestant and was critical of the work of Catholic missionaries on this island, where people who practiced cannibalism still lived. He once talked to an old chief about his religious beliefs. In the past, they worshipped a god on this island called Tiki. In a conversation with the chief, he made a slightly ironic reference to the practices of Catholic missionaries. But he was very surprised when the old chief told him, “As soon as we heard the news about Jesus, we knew immediately that he was our Tiki.” We could say, “We knew immediately that he was our God.”
If we could say that the traces of God in nature lead us to something we can call a conviction of God’s existence, that is, they lead us to faith in God, then the traces of God in the Holy Scriptures and in our conscience lead us to faith in God—to the trust that is necessary to please God.
