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Click here for information on the Knights of Columbus Charity Golf Tournament held on Saturday, June 15, 2024.
Our readings all echo the same theme: prophets, people who speak the truth in a world gone crazy, are ignored, ostracized and regarded as fools or even dangerous. But God assures us that He will hear our cry, draw us out of the mud, put a new song into our mouth.
If there was ever a time when we needed prophets, in the world and in our country, it is today. Sometimes we pick up the paper and just want to shout, “Make it stop!” And yet it seems that there is no shortage of people claiming to be prophetic. Everyday our political candidates tell us what is wrong and how to correct it. But believe me, they are not Jeremiah, although sometimes I wish we could drop them into a well! What do we most need to hear in terms of prophetic challenge? Which voices resonate with the great prophets of Israel and the prophet of prophets, Jesus?
The first thing that distinguishes the prophetic voice, long before any critique issues from it, is love. A prophet does not make a vow of alienation, but of love. The role of a prophet is not to shout angrily in our face but to lovingly reveal God’s challenge. Criticism, divorced from love, always falls on deaf ears. So maybe the question for us today is where are we deaf, morally and spiritually? Where do we need to be prophetically confronted and challenged. Two thoughts.
First, how we treat widows, orphans, and strangers. For the Jewish prophet there was a simple principle: the quality of our faith depends upon the quality of justice in the land and the quality of justice in the land depends upon how we treat those with the least status in society. The most vulnerable, the poor, the homeless, the refugee, the immigrant, the imprisoned, the dying. Christ made that a condition for entry into the kingdom. In Christ’s vision of things, the last are first; the outcasts are rewarded. There is a saying, no one gets into heaven without a letter of recommendation from the poor. As a nation we do not do very well in this aspect. Think what would happen if our prophetic voices were raised in the social justice issues of today. Refugees welcomed with open arms, euthanasia no longer an option because of the loving care and pain relief provided to the dying. Capital punishment abolished, abortion restricted. Immigrants given a path to citizenship. Welfare rolls reduced through programs that give an incentive to employment with a fair living wage. In the words of the Gospel, these things would “set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
Secondly, we need to challenge and be challenged to regain our sense of sin, both personal and social. More and more, in our politically correct society we lack the courage to acknowledge sin. We never even mention the word. It is time for some biblical prophet to step up and call us not just to conversion but back to sanity. We need to be challenged to make our own the words of Paul, “I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate.” If we think these words do not apply to us, we need to think again. When our conscience is calloused, then our social action will also be calloused. For the sake of political correctness we have adopted a “you do what you want and as long as it doesn’t hurt me it is OK.” It isn’t. Some things are right and some are wrong. To be prophetic is to call a sin a sin and to recognize it in ourselves and in the world. To be for something means you are against something else. If you are for the sanctity of life then you have to be against not just abortion but also physician assisted suicide and capital punishment. Saying it is OK may be politically correct but it isn’t prophetic. Our challenge is to say what we as Catholic Christians stand for and then “to set the earth on fire!”
If there was ever a time when we needed prophets, in the world and in our country, it is today. Sometimes we pick up the paper and just want to shout, “Make it stop!” And yet it seems that there is no shortage of people claiming to be prophetic. Everyday our political candidates tell us what is wrong and how to correct it. But believe me, they are not Jeremiah, although sometimes I wish we could drop them into a well! What do we most need to hear in terms of prophetic challenge? Which voices resonate with the great prophets of Israel and the prophet of prophets, Jesus?
The first thing that distinguishes the prophetic voice, long before any critique issues from it, is love. A prophet does not make a vow of alienation, but of love. The role of a prophet is not to shout angrily in our face but to lovingly reveal God’s challenge. Criticism, divorced from love, always falls on deaf ears. So maybe the question for us today is where are we deaf, morally and spiritually? Where do we need to be prophetically confronted and challenged. Two thoughts.
First, how we treat widows, orphans, and strangers. For the Jewish prophet there was a simple principle: the quality of our faith depends upon the quality of justice in the land and the quality of justice in the land depends upon how we treat those with the least status in society. The most vulnerable, the poor, the homeless, the refugee, the immigrant, the imprisoned, the dying. Christ made that a condition for entry into the kingdom. In Christ’s vision of things, the last are first; the outcasts are rewarded. There is a saying, no one gets into heaven without a letter of recommendation from the poor. As a nation we do not do very well in this aspect. Think what would happen if our prophetic voices were raised in the social justice issues of today. Refugees welcomed with open arms, euthanasia no longer an option because of the loving care and pain relief provided to the dying. Capital punishment abolished, abortion restricted. Immigrants given a path to citizenship. Welfare rolls reduced through programs that give an incentive to employment with a fair living wage. In the words of the Gospel, these things would “set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
Secondly, we need to challenge and be challenged to regain our sense of sin, both personal and social. More and more, in our politically correct society we lack the courage to acknowledge sin. We never even mention the word. It is time for some biblical prophet to step up and call us not just to conversion but back to sanity. We need to be challenged to make our own the words of Paul, “I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate.” If we think these words do not apply to us, we need to think again. When our conscience is calloused, then our social action will also be calloused. For the sake of political correctness we have adopted a “you do what you want and as long as it doesn’t hurt me it is OK.” It isn’t. Some things are right and some are wrong. To be prophetic is to call a sin a sin and to recognize it in ourselves and in the world. To be for something means you are against something else. If you are for the sanctity of life then you have to be against not just abortion but also physician assisted suicide and capital punishment. Saying it is OK may be politically correct but it isn’t prophetic. Our challenge is to say what we as Catholic Christians stand for and then “to set the earth on fire!”