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The Call to be a Prophet
The Reading for this 20th Sunday, could be jarring to our ears. If we feel so, then we must pay close attention to our call to be prophets. We who have been confirmed have been given a share in Christ’s prophetic anointing. If our goal is to be everybody’s ‘likeable fellow’, we are going to have a hard time being faithful. The word that God commands us to share is sometimes comforting, sometimes disturbing. We must get over our fear of offending people and love them enough to tell them the truth. Of course, there is always the question of the right place and time. But if no place is the right place and the right time never comes, we can be sure that we are allowing fear of other’s opinion to get in the way of love. Love is not about being sentimental or popular. It shakes things up and sets the world on fire.
Today’s readings remind us that God at times uses some direct and terse language to bring attention to truth. The reason for this is that God is love, and love is more concerned about the welfare of others than with one’s own image just like parents who want the best for their children at the risk of not ‘agreeing with them’. So, if some fun-loving travelers are on a seemingly pleasant canoe ride down a lazy river, love cares enough to warn them that a huge fall is up ahead. “Everyone is free to choose!” But opinions don’t change the fact that going over the falls in a canoe will kill you.
In the first reading of today, Jeremiah is persecuted by the mighty and powerful because he is not being politically correct. Around the year 587 before Christ, the city of Jerusalem was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar. People were suffering. But the army generals kept the war going aggravating the situation of the people. Jeremiah was the lonely voice that was putting pressure on King Zedekiah to surrender to reduce the suffering of the people. But this was not politically correct; it threatened the pride of the army. So, Jeremiah is thrown into a dry well to silence him. It takes the courage of an Ethiopian, Ebed-melech who too prefers to be politically incorrect to let the king know that silencing the prophet was not right. Jeremiah is rescued.
Pope Pius XII in 1946, warned us about “the sin of the century”: the loss of sense of sin. The
solution to the loss of sense of sin is not a guilty conscience, but a rightful acceptance of the resistance within us that refuses to allow the grace of God to flow within us. The second reading of today from the Letter to the Hebrews invites us to “fight against sin” as we “keep running steadily in the race that we have started” (Heb 12:1). This fight against sin is not just the obedience to the commandments, but something deeper than that. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us, “Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection” (Heb 12:2). Obedience to the law could make us complacent, but the journey towards perfection disturbs us. It is a challenge to “keep running steadily.” St. Theresa of Kolkata would often say: ‘God calls us to be faithful, not just successful.’
The reality of opposition to the Gospel in our contemporary society is intensifying on a daily basis with nascent frontiers. In families, towns, and political gatherings and even at the international stage; people are renewing their strength and vigor at resisting the truth of the Gospel with new theories and attitudes; and even subjecting the ministers of the Gospel to varied forms of suffering and blackmail. This indeed is partly the cause of the divisions our Lord talks about in the Gospel Reading (Luke 12:49-53). The division that arises from the encounter between the force of the eternal truth of the Word of God and the force of opposition to this truth. These divisions exist among us; not because the purpose of the Word is primarily to bring division in our midst, but because we have refused to allow the Word of God to yield the fruits it should by listening to it. The following prayer is for all of us who shy away from being authentic prophets in trying times:
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Sir Francis Drakeer
Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O.