When you hear the word, prophet, what comes to mind? A person who can successfully foresee the future? Derived from the Greek for “one who speaks on behalf of,” a prophet speaks to us on behalf of God, or on behalf of those who have no one else to speak for them, giving voice to the voiceless. Prophets call on their listeners to be faithful to their religious traditions. They predict the future when they forecast what could happen if God’s message is ignored. For that reason, prophets were not always welcomed.
Undoubtedly, Ezekiel did not relish the task that God entrusted to him. He probably had the gut feeling that whatever he said would fall on deaf ears. Perhaps he would be ignored or even killed, for that is often the fate of prophets who bear unwelcomed news. All he knew then was that God was counting on him to be his voice in the midst of obstinate people who were no longer listening.
Six centuries later, people still chose not to listen to a prophet in their midst. When Jesus came home to Nazareth, many were astonished at what he had to say while teaching them in the synagogue. What qualified him to be a prophet? After all, he was one of them! He was only a carpenter when he last lived here. Unable to perform any miracles, Jesus left Nazareth, amazed at their lack of faith.
Is anyone listening? That was the question Ezekiel and Jesus must have asked themselves many times when they spoke. That same question haunts every prophet even today as they proclaim God’s word in our midst twenty centuries later. Are we listening to the prophets among us? Or are we, like the people in Jesus’ home town, rejecting or ignoring what God has to say?
So long as we follow their example and turn a deaf ear on what God is saying, there will be prophets in our midst for God will never stop speaking. What a prophet has to say can turn a nation around. The Hebrew testament is filled with many examples, such as when Jeremiah spoke to the citizens of Nineveh, who then repented, fasted, and changed their ways.
Even in our times, that has happened. When I was a child, many in our country never imagined that the walls of segregation would ever fall. But they did when Martin Luther King, Jr. stood before the Lincoln Memorial nearly 50 years ago and shared his dream that one day his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. That day America heard the message of a prophet and began to change.
Who might the prophets of today be? Gandhi once said, “It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honor, his religion, his soul, and lay the foundation for that empire’s fall or its regeneration.” As a leader of non-violence, Gandhi was such an individual. So were the other prophets of ages past. We can do the same if we commit ourselves before God to prayerfully challenge our nation to be what it was founded to be, a country where everyone is given the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Prophets are the physicians of the diseases of the soul. They could be the ordinary people we know who see a wrong and speak up. Every person who participated in the March for Life last winter could be considered a prophet, recognizing the need to confront our society’s tolerance of an evil that is slowly eroding away its quality of life much like segregation did decades ago.
Like Ezekiel, I don’t relish the mission of being a prophet, of challenging people on moral issues such as premarital sex, abortion or artificial contraception, values that are accepted by our culture yet still sinful according to what God has always said.
In our society we have so exalted the individual conscience that often we refuse to acknowledge a moral law beyond ourselves. “I do my thing, you do yours. I won’t bother you, you don’t bother me.” For many people, such as our politicians and the news media, this approach sounds quite fair but they fail to see that those who have power wind up pushing aside those who are weaker; hence our society does little to uphold the dignity of life from the womb to the tomb, from the unborn to the terminally ill.
We need a moral conscience bigger than our individual consciences if we are to safeguard our society and build up God’s kingdom. We need prophets, like Archbishop Sartain and Cardinal Dolan who have dared to confront moral issues that run contrary to the doctrines of our faith, which are based on teachings of Christ, not on how the majority may feel.
If we choose not to listen to our modern day prophets, we may find ourselves wondering why there is so little peace, justice, and happiness in our society. God sends prophets to speak to us about matters of supreme importance, for they impact our relationship with him, not only now but for all eternity.
In the Collect for today’s Mass, we prayed that the God who has raised a fallen world might bestow eternal gladness on those who have been rescued from slavery to sin. We will be free from that slavery when we allow our conduct to more Christ like but this cannot happen until we seek to be numbered among those who know that a prophet has been among them and having heard his voice, they can see that by taking the road less traveled by, it will make all the difference for them and others.