Prophet

A couple of days a go (on June 24 to be exact) the Church celebrated the feast of the Birth of John the Baptist. Everybody knows who he is—the “voice crying out in the wilderness,” the son of thought-to-be sterile parents, the cousin of Jesus, the prophet whose head actually (and not just figuratively) ended up on a platter. But not a lot of people realize that he’s one of only 3 people in the Church whose birthday is celebrated (the other two being Mary and Jesus). Everyone else—great saints, patriarchs, martyrs and doctors of the Church—get to have their deaths celebrated. That’s a pretty big honor. But he was a pretty important guy.

If your birth is told to your parents by way of an angel, you’re bound to be an important guy. If you were born into a family that could trace its roots back to the house of Aaron (Moses’ brother), you’re bound to be an important guy. If you could claim that you were related to the Son of God, you’re bound to be an important guy. And if you went around eating locusts and honey and telling people to repent because you knew—with a certainty nobody else could claim—that the long awaited Messiah was about to come, you’re bound to be a really important guy. The problem, though, with really important guys is that they’re bound to get really important enemies.

The one thing that really got him killed wasn’t so much his family background or his auspicious beginnings or his connections. It was, in fact, what he said and whom he said it to, that ultimately got him killed. He was a prophet you see. And prophets (especially in the Bible) are a rather confusing lot. On one hand, ordinary people are fascinated by the things that they preached (for prophecy involves more that just telling the future). On the other hand, people were annoyed about the message that unless they changed their lifestyles, something drastic and tragic was going to happen. Nobody wants to be around a person who constantly tells you (even if it is true) that you are sinful and need to repent. Nobody wants to be around bearers of bad news all the time. Nobody grows up aspiring to one day be a prophet of God. Because the more popular stories in the Bible about prophets tell us what happened to them—they get sent to the lion’s den, they get eaten by large fish, they get exiled, they get scorned, laughed at and then they get beheaded. And who would want to grow up to die that way?

Can we have a show of hands? –None? I didn’t think so.

But the ironic thing is, the world needs prophets now more than ever. Perhaps not necessarily prophets who can predict future events or make calculations about when the world will end, but prophets who remind others about what was already said—that we ought to be living good and holy lives, that we ought to ready to fight evil and sin in every instance, that we will one day be accountable for everything we did, that God does exist, that He is good and merciful and He is also just.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the world wants to listen to those messages because, let’s face it, it’s so much easier to block it out. It’s so much easier believe in the gospel of the “whatever works for you,” or the message of the “whatever feels good,” or the moral of the “if I’m not hurting anyone, what does it really matter,” or the dogma of the “it’s none of my business anyway.”

But it does matter. And it is very much our business. The message of the prophets has not changed. The what? Convert and repent. The why? Because God wants to draw us closer to Himself.The when? Now. The where? Wherever you are. The how? With authority but with love and compassion.The who?—Okay, maybe this is the one thing that has changed. So your name isn’t Jonah or Samuel or Daniel or Elijah or Isaiah or John (or maybe it is, but that’s not the point). So maybe your birth wasn’t announced by an angel. So maybe you’re not entirely good with words or are uncomfortable about the message you’re about to deliver.

So what? He made a shepherd into a king.A tax collector into an apostle.An erring apostle into the head of his Church.A murderer into a saint.There are countless stories of how God makes straight with crooked lines. So perhaps he is asking you (or me) to be a prophet. Maybe just to our families. Or our friends.Or our co-workers.We can’t all be John the Baptist. But we can still deliver his message. Two thousand years later, it hasn’t changed.