Signs and Symbols

I’ve been interested these days in the difference between signs and symbols. Firstly, I think it’s intriguing to consider that there is a difference, when the two are so often thought to be interchangeable. And secondly, since the Church rejects that the Eucharist is a symbol, but affirms that Christ is a sign, an appreciation of the difference promised to lead to a deeper understanding of God through Christ.

So here we go. Symbols, it seems to me, are things that we ourselves create, while signs are from God. We make symbols. God gives us signs. A cross on a necklace is a symbol, a holy reminder, whereas finding a cross on the ground, right after praying for the grace to unite one’s sufferings with Christ, may be a sign. The symbol of the eagle represents the Gospel of John, because its richness soars into the light of the heavens, but to be able to look directly at the sun for a prolonged period of time while on pilgrimage is a sign.

The important thing when we believe ourselves to be given a sign is to ask what it means, to try to interpret what God might be saying to us through the sign. Miracles are awesome, but they serve a purpose. Remember, Jesus resisted the temptation to throw Himself down off the parapet of the temple, because that would be to reduce His miracles to exhibitionism. So too, we move through the miracle to the message.

We may ask if it needs to be this way. Why doesn’t God deal with us more directly? Why use signs at all? Asking those questions is imperative to understanding our relationship with God, as well as with Christ and His Church.

If God, for example, is entirely other and infinitely transcendent (which we hold that He is), that is, if He is eternal spirit, then we are not His equals - we who are made, not begotten. Therefore, to think of God communicating with us directly is itself unimaginable. Rather, such a God would use signs, which we would then perceive by His grace and interpret by His Spirit. And helping one another with this work of discernment would make us one in Him, a Church - a people peculiarly His own.

Some in history have said to have encountered God somewhat more directly through, say, visions of Jesus or Mary or the Saints, but even Our Lord and Our Lady and the Saints are signs of God. By seeing them, we hear a word from God.

It is not a reduction of the divinity of Jesus to say that His humanity is a sign that reveals God to us - “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” - but it does mean that it has always been possible for someone to hear and see Jesus, but not to see God through Him. These are the people to whom He said after multiplying the loaves, “I AM the Bread of Life,” teaching the meaning of the miracle, but then also said, “Your stomachs were fed but you did not see the sign.”

Something similar happened when He stood in the temple and said to the Pharisees, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” We’re told that He was speaking about the temple of His body, but the Pharisees did not understand, because they did not see Jesus as a sign.

So when we see Him, as we do this weekend, entering into Jerusalem on a donkey, do we hear the Word God speaks to us through that gesture? Do we see it as a sign - a sign of God’s extraordinary humility? What a wonderful thing - that God would find ways of communicating His eternal nature, His very heart, to us, His lowly creatures who are not all that unlike the donkey. +