Reading the signs of the times

THIS task already had its tricky parts since time immemorial. But compared to present conditions, the past was rather a very simple and easy task to carry out.

Given the multiplying forces and influences that go into our current culture, reading the signs of the times has become a formidable task that approaches the level of a nightmare.

And precisely because of our complex, intricate and puzzling world, this task has become more necessary. We need to stay away from the grip of ignorance, confusion, error, the ingredients of perdition.

Still, not everything is lost and beyond hope. The amount of information, given our ever-developing technologies, is not only massive and profound but is also much easier to access now.

Besides, we are never lacking of people with great potentials to effectively undertake this delicate task. We just need to discover them and inspire them.

What we needed at present is the discipline to have an abiding concern to read the signs of the times. This is no simple thing, since it’s not just a matter of attitude, habits and skills, though they figure prominently in this task.

Yes, we need to learn how to collect data, compare notes, dialogue with different parties, consult experts, study, reflect, make conclusions and plan, etc., but all these are not enough.

Rather, this discipline in the end depends on our living contact and relationship with what we consider as our God, what we regard as our ultimate source of light and understanding.

This is where the main problem comes. Many of us still rely almost exclusively on our own devices, our own natural endowments. Many still have not managed to link our best resources with an objective and transcendent God.

Instead, many of us still feel our high intelligence, our cleverness, our increasing scientific expertise are enough. It is as if these can be equivalent to God. Thus, we fail to realize that our sophistication can turn into naivete.

Remember St. Paul saying: “The foolish things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the wise. The weak things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the strong.” (1 Cor 1,27)

Many of us still don’t realize that this objective and transcendent God, completely supernatural to us, makes himself accessible to us in ways that are revealed as well as established by him, with our cooperation.

There are the doctrines, the sacraments, the Church, etc. that can truly connect us with this living God. What’s needed is that we have the necessary dispositions, and from there, the appropriate practices and virtues, to keep this bond alive and abiding.

With these prerequisites, we can aspire to read the signs of the times. We can penetrate the externals and appearances, expose the ethos animating our society, and monitor its development—from gestation to maturity and decay.

With these prerequisites, we can have the needed criteria for judgment, and keep distance from shallow and narrow perceptions. We would have a running account of how things are evolving in the different areas.

We have to acquire the expertise of identifying the significant elements of our current culture, and to articulate what is good and bad in them, what is right and wrong. Only then can we attempt to come up with the appropriate remedies. And I believe that there always are cures for our problems.

These days, for example, the Pope has warned us about the dangers of relativism, both in belief and in morals. We need to be familiar with its nature, ways and manifestations.

There are other disturbing isms affecting us today, like individualism, hedonism, positivism, etc. We need to know them and see how they are affecting us.

From there, we can try to clarify matters, pointing out their lack of basis, their inherent contradictions, and the unavoidable dead ends that they lead to. Of course, we have to do all this with utmost charity, shunning unnecessary frictions with other people.

We have to outgrow whatever hesitation we may have with respect to this responsibility. Sometimes, we think this is too cerebral, too abstract and not relevant, since its need and effects are often not directly felt.