I’ll admit - I am constantly looking for signs. I always want to know, to have an answer, to have assurance that I’m doing the right thing.

I’m taken aback and confused by Jesus’ words in the Gospel for today. It seems a bit harsh and unfair for God to withhold assurance or guidance. But Jesus isn’t saying no sign will be given; Jesus says that no sign will be given, except the sign of Jonah. The people will have guidance through repentance, so that they can turn back to God’s ways.

But God doesn’t stop there. Jesus then says, “Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.” In essence, God is promising to send “no sign” to this generation… except for the very Son of Man.

I’m not sure whether to see God here as annoyed and aggravated with us, or as deeply compassionate. Even for the evil generations, the “worst” you’ll get is the very Son of God! Thus, the only sign those who have chosen evil will receive, is Jesus, the One who enables true repentance, true transformation, true conversion back to God.

The Greek word for “repentance” is μετανοέω, which originally comes from the roots μετά and νοέω, meaning “a change of mind.” In the first reading, we see that God has in fact already “changed his mind” regarding the Ninevites: God “repented” and does not carry out the evil he had originally threatened to do. God now is asking us to repent - through Jesus. God wants us to change our minds, to change our hearts, to turn away from evil and back to God.

If the evil generations are still promised Jesus as the “only” sign, it makes me wonder when we do repent and choose God’s love over evil, how bountiful the signs must be...

For when we choose God, it’s not that God will then begin to love us more and so give us more signs. Rather, when we choose to love God, we are choosing to operate in a different frame of mind. We are choosing to be open to God’s abundant love that is already there for us each and every day. And then, as Walt Whitman describes, we may just find ourselves surrounded, overwhelmed, and inundated with God’s love letters, i.e., God’s signs in every single person, every single day, and in the glory of who we ourselves are created to be:

“I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.” (Song of Myself, 48)

No need to seek for a sign when we’ve repented. For when we’ve turned our minds and hearts to the love of God, we recognize Christ everywhere. We see that we, too, are the sign. Every being around us is the sign. Each day is the sign. Creation itself is the sign - all a sign of God reaching out to us.

For complete text: https://poets.org/poem/song-myself-48