Being Prophet-able

Saturday of the 2^nd Week of Advent

Matthew 17:9a, 10-13

One of the best ways to read Scripture is to put yourself in it, to be one of the characters. In today’s gospel story, one role stands out like it was made for me: the scribes. These men loved God, devoted hours to studying His word, prided themselves on their knowledge (maybe a bit too much), and were absolutely brilliant at finding ways to be wrong. Today, they show Jesus how they can correctly interpret Scripture about the coming of Elijah while at the same time completely miss the fact that Elijah had already come.

Rather than dwell on that mistake, I think it’s better to learn from it, especially since we who are baptized have already been anointed prophet in imitation of Christ. So, what is a prophet and how am I one?

Holy Father John Paul II wrote about this in his exhortation Christifideles Laici. Though it’s hard (for me) to easily summarize him on just about anything, if I were to try, I’d say that a prophet is anyone who lives the gospel with love, courage, and patience, and does it so everyone see and benefit from it.

So, how does a prophet live the gospel? I can think of at least two ways, based on what the Holy Father says:

1. Focus on the gospel’s “newness.” How is the gospel new? Haven’t we heard its stories time in and time out? Yes, but its lessons are so timeless, so fundamental that they apply to every circumstance of life, however old or new. We live prophetically when we allow the Holy Spirit to help us make connections between the gospel and peoples’ life situation, and then find ways to share them.
   
2. Live the gospel message of hope. The Holy Father also speaks of prophets as those who live out the virtue of hope. As we know all too well, the secular world has no use for such virtues, convinced as it is that there is no God and eternal life nothing but a wishful fantasy. The prophet has the courage and patience to be, like Christ, a public and living sign of contradiction.

Given these, I suggest we take some time to reflect on all the prophets who have touched our lives, and thank God for the ways they helped turn us toward Him. They may not have known they were living prophetically, they just followed their spiritual instincts and allowed the Holy Spirit to work through them. Nevertheless, we are who and where we are thanks to God and His action in their lives.

Let’s also turn the spotlight inward and ask ourselves how we are living as prophets. Are we taking time to meditate on the lessons of the gospel and find connections between those and our own lives? If and when we counsel other people, do we pray that the Holy Spirit will help us find ways to show them similar connections? They may not want to hear it, but when did a prophet ever let that stop them? Finally, how are we living out faith in Christ to an unbelieving world? It’s easy inside these walls, with our believing friends; what about outside them, where the world seems to want to ignore the gospel? Wherever we are on that front, let us continue to pray for the courage and the patience to do what Christ the priest, prophet, and king did and continues to do every day: Meet people where they are, but never leave them there.