The theme of prophecy is apparent in our readings: The prophet Jeremiah testifies to the Lord saying to him, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a Prophet to the nations”.

What does it mean to be a prophet? A prophet is not an activist – a prophet is not a militant – A prophet stands up and speaks – like Jeremiah – a prophet speaks loudly and clearly, but does not shout down his opponents; a prophet does not twist the truth to make his message more appealing; our world has many activists and militants for trendy causes– we see them on tv, in social media, in university classrooms and in street gatherings – but it needs prophets more than it needs activists; activists change structures – prophets change hearts.

How are you a prophet? Perhaps you were a prophet just by coming here today; perhaps you had to resist the misunderstanding looks of relatives, friends, very close family members – even your own children – as you made your way to church today. And maybe those looks were asking the question, “Why do you go there?”

Perhaps you are a prophet in the way that you continually stand up for the dignity of all human life, also the life that is yet unborn; you do so with your prayers, with your political activity,with where and how you shop, and with your hope that there will come a day when all human life, especially unborn human life will be protected; as the prophet Jeremiah said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…”

And perhaps you are a prophet in the way that you pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, asking, pleading for mercy in front of God the Father, on behalf of ourselves and our world; “For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world”; we ourselves need mercy, we ourselves need a continual conversion.

Vatican II, in the Constitution Lumen Gentium (35) says: Jesus Christ “continually fulfills His prophetic office until the complete manifestation of glory. He does this not only through the hierarchy who teach in His name and with His authority, but also through the laity whom He made His witnesses and to whom He gave understanding of the faith … and an attractiveness in speech…so that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in their daily social and family life…Let them not, then, hide this hope in the depths of their hearts, but even in the program of their secular life let them express it by a continual conversion and by wrestling ‘against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness’”.

Jesus, in the Gospel of Saint Luke, testifies to the fact that it is very hard to be a prophet among one’s own family; in one’s own town; in one’s own workplace; in fact, one of the reasons why Jesus was rejected in his own town, was because the townspeople knew his parents, Mary and Joseph, and his extended family – cousins, relations, and the like; Jesus got painted with the same brush as his relations; perhaps this too is a temptation; “oh, she’s a so-and-so, we know her kind”; “he’s a such-and-such, we know his family”; Jesus had the strength to do something extremely difficult – he was able to speak prophetically in front of his own people; and ultimately, he won.

We too are able to draw on this prophetic strength by focusing on something we had heard in the second reading, from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians: we need to allow ourselves to be known; we need to return, again and again, to the space of allowing ourselves to be known by Jesus Christ, the God-Man, who desires deeply that we are, indeed, known; Jesus also desires that we realize that we are worthy of being known; when we go deeper than our plans, deeper than our fears, deeper than our shame, we discover the living God who yearns to know us; this “knowledge” can happen in silence, in meditation, in front of the Blessed Sacrament; with it comes liberty, courage, strength and passion to fulfill the prophetic office we have all received in our baptism.

As we strive to fulfill our prophetic role, let us ask our Blessed Mother to guide us, and give us supernatural wisdom, Amen.

(Fr. Pawel Ratajczak OMI, Feb. 3, 2019)