Reflection
The prophet does more than denounce evil. Instead, prophetic spirituality envisions a world in which justice and equality, peace and community are the norm rather than the struggle. It is the prophet of our time who leads the way to the development of an alternative vision of life by imagining a new normal. Today’s prophets prepare for the reconstruction of society by imagining the achievable and drawing others to see it as well. Vision is the first step toward change…Prophets do not tiptoe around truth nor do they distort it. The truth itself commits us all to something better.
Joan Chittister
Prayer
Would that all Gods people were prophets, and that the God would put God’s Spirit upon them!
Numbers 11:29
Action
Where do you see God’s Spirit acting in the prophets of our time? How are you being called to be prophetic?
Suggested Reading
For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
2 Peter 1:21
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
Matthew 7:15
A true prophet is the one who is capable of crying for his people and also saying things strongly when he has to.
Pope Francis
To know anything at all of God’s will we have to participate, in some manner, in the vision of the prophets who were always alive to the divine light concealed in the opacity of things and events, and who sometimes saw glimpses of that light where others saw nothing but ordinary happenings.
Thomas Merton
Prophets are those who take life as it is and expand it. They refuse to shrink a vision of tomorrow to the boundaries of yesterday.
Joan Chittister
Prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.
Shane Claiborne
We can always be sure of one thing—that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.
Christopher Hitchens
Being a prophet in the wilderness speaking truth to power typically leads to poverty and punishment. It is far easier to follow the lucrative trade winds of popular opinion but withheld honesty results in forgotten words.
Stewart Stafford
The task of the prophet is not to smooth things over but to make things right.
Eugene H. Peterson