Jesus is almost teasing the crowd today.
You can look at the sky and tell what the weather is going to do.
Cloud coming from the west? Rain. South wind? Heat.
In England we might claim rather less confidence. Sometimes we can have all four seasons before lunch.
But Our Lord’s point is serious.
You can read the weather. Why can you not read what God is doing?
They have Christ standing in front of them.
They have heard His teaching.
They have seen His works.
The Kingdom of God is breaking into the world before their eyes — and somehow they still cannot see it.
That can happen to us.
We can become very good at reading everything except our own spiritual life.
We know what is happening in the news.
We know what other people are doing wrong.
We can usually diagnose the problems of the Church, the country, the family and perhaps half the parish before breakfast.
But can we read the signs in ourselves?
Is prayer becoming deeper?
Are we more patient than we were? More forgiving?
Less attached to a particular sin? More serious about Christ?
Saint Paul gives us something wonderfully practical in the first reading:
“Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”
Then he tells us what that looks like. Humility. Gentleness. Patience.
Bearing with one another in love.
Making every effort to preserve unity.
That is not glamorous Christianity.
Nobody is likely to make a film about somebody patiently putting up with an irritating relative.
But that may require more holiness than many spectacular things.
Paul says there is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.
Christian unity is not created by pretending truth does not matter.
It comes from belonging to the same Christ.
Yesterday the Church remembered Saint John Paul II, whose Petrine ministry began on 22 October 1978, and today she remembers Saint John of Capistrano.
Very different centuries.
Very different circumstances.
But both understood something which our readings say today:
when Christ calls, you cannot spend your life permanently postponing the answer.
John Paul II began his ministry with that famous appeal not to be afraid to welcome Christ and open life to Him.
That is still needed.
Because fear makes us postpone.
“I will deal with that eventually.” “I will forgive eventually.”
“I will pray properly eventually.” “I will make that change eventually.”
And eventually has a remarkable habit of never arriving.
That is why Jesus ends today by speaking about settling matters while we are still on the road.
There is urgency in that. Not panic. Urgency.
Life is moving. We are moving. And every day we are becoming something.
More open to grace or more resistant. More generous or more self-centred.
More ready for God or more comfortable without Him.
Christ does not ask us to predict the future.
He asks us to recognise the present.
Where is grace asking something of me now?
Where have I been making excuses?
Where is reconciliation needed?
Where is God saying: Do not keep putting this off.
And there is hope in that, because if Christ shows us something that needs changing, it is because He is already giving grace to change it.
The sign of God’s presence is not that we have become perfect overnight.
It is that we are moving towards Him.
A little more humble.
A little more patient.
A little quicker to forgive.
A little less frightened to belong openly to Christ.
The clouds tell us rain may be coming.
The Gospel tells us something much more important:
Christ is here now.
Read the sign.
And follow Him.
