The Churches tend to enforce the same message: "Obedience is the highest virtue, and stay unsullied by the world. Your main job is to get to heaven."
The world - and sometimes the Church - enforces the message: "If you don't play nice, if you dispute the fairness of the rules, if you actually look beyond your own welfare and salvation to speak up for anyone else, you will pay the price. People will be angry with you. People will laugh at you. People will say that you are being disloyal to your country or your company or your Church. People will verbally and sometimes even physically abuse you. Be warned."
In fact, the Nicene Creed has the perfect line of short-sighted "enforcement": We speak of the Holy Spirit, Who SPOKE through the prophets. Now, THAT is putting the Holy Spirit in His/Her place. Your job is over, Holy Spirit. You've done all the speaking out, all the rabble-rousing, that You need to do. Your prophets predicted the Coming of the Holy Child, and that has been accomplished. We do not need any more prophets.
But - when each of us was baptized into the life, death, resurrection, and Heart of Jesus the Christ, we were anointed priest, PROPHET, and King. One of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit is the Gift of Prophecy. The Holy Spirit continues to speak out about Truth, Justice, and Compassion through US!
The Prophet - and we are baptized to be prophets - cries out to God day and night, "May the Fire of Your Word consume our sins and Its brightness illumine our hearts." What does this prayer teach us?
First, the prophet is not concerned with just his own spiritual salvation. She understands that all human beings, in fact all creation, are bound together, united in Christ. The prophet's prayer is always for ALL, not just her family, friends, Church, nation, or even prayer list.
Second, he knows that God's Word consumes our sins - and what is the sin we commit that causes God to vomit us out of His/Her Mouth? It's not disobedience or impurity. It's indifference and lukewarmness! Prophets' words and lives are the exact opposite of indifference and lukewarmness. They are on fire with the Word of God, and only God's Truth and opinion of them matters. Not society's fake Truths. Not society's opinion. Not even their own families' opinion. Not the opinions of Facebook friends. When this Word of God illumines their hearts, they see what is really going on in society, and they love with the Heart of Christ, a Love which does not put boundaries on Truth, Justice, Compassion, or even Salvation.
To limit the Old Testaments' prophets to the role of foretelling the Birth of Christ is a Fake Truth. They also warned the people - the ordinary citizens, the shop-keepers, the rich and entitled, the religious hierarchy, the nation itself - about what would happen if they did not repent of their sins and change their lives. We are called by God to the same role today: to see and preach the Truth. We are to be "in the world, but not of it." We are to be in the world by being passionately involved in learning the Truth about how society treats its most vulnerable and in speaking up for them. We are to be not of the world by being OF GOD, one of God's Own, speaking God's Truth, having God's own Heart of Justice and Mercy. Being immersed in Prayer, in contemplation, prophets desire God's Kingdom to come, and work for a world which is filled with justice and peace.
Prophets don't "play nice." They are non-violent, but above all, they are Truth-seekers and Truth-Tellers. Because they don't keep quiet, they are considered trouble-makers. They are even called "insane" - didn't Jesus' own family call him that? Yet prophets are the truly sane people. They are sometimes verbally or physically abused. Sometimes, like Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Bishop Oscar Romero, and, above all, Jesus, prophets die, at the hands of the institutions they call to repentance and justice and non-violence. Through Contemplation, keeping their eyes on the Vision of God's Face, they receive the Holy Spirit's gifts of fiery courage, stamina, love, and endurance, to keep going.
Once, again, there are many good people who think that obedience is the highest virtue, that loyalty means that everyone who has a leadership role, in the country or the Church, should be given nothing but obedient respect, that we can never criticize them. But if there had not been prophets, mostly lay people, who spoke out, and are speaking out, about the sexual abuse going on in the Church, the Church would never be working to reform itself today. Toxic clericalism would still be ruling. If there were not prophets today, speaking out about the need for women to have a greater voice and role in the Church, the sin of sexism would still rule in the patriarchal structure. Fr. Richard Rohr, a prophet himself, says that the Real Truth is that a Prophet's role is to upset the unequal balance in society and in the Church.
"Prophets can deeply love their tradition and profoundly criticize it at the same time, which is a very rare art form. In fact, it is their love of its depths that forces them to criticize their own religion. This is almost the hallmark of a prophet. Their deepest motivation is not negative but profoundly positive.
"The dualistic mind presumes that if you criticize something, you don’t love it. Wise prophets would say the opposite. Institutions prefer loyalists and 'company men' to prophets. We’re uncomfortable with people who point out our shadow or imperfections. It is no accident that prophets and priests are usually in opposition to one another (e.g., Amos 5:21-6:7, 7:10-17). Yet Paul says the prophetic gift is the second most important charism (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11). Prophets are not popular people. Note how the Gospels say it was 'the priests, elders, and teachers of the law' who condemned Jesus.
"Human consciousness does not emerge at any depth except through struggling with our shadow. It is in facing our own contradictions that we grow. It is in the struggle with our shadow self, with failure, or with wounding that we break into higher levels of consciousness. People who learn to expose, name, and still thrive inside contradictions are what I would call prophets.
"One of the most common complaints I hear from some Catholics is, 'You criticize the Church too much.' But criticizing the Church is just being faithful to the very clear pattern set by the prophets and Jesus (just read Matthew 23). I would not bother criticizing organized Christianity if I did not also love it. There is a negative criticism that is nothing but complaining and projecting. But there is a positive criticism that is all about hope and development. This is no small point, and such a difference must be taught. The charism of prophecy must be called forth.
"The United States and many other nations need courageous prophets as today’s world leaders show little or no ability to criticize their own duplicitous power games. I suspect that we get the leaders who mirror what we have become as nations. They are our shadow self for all to see, which is what the Hebrew prophets told Israel both before and during their painfully long exile (596–538 BCE). Yet, this was the very time when the Jewish people went deep enough to discover their prophetic voices—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others—speaking truth to power, calling for justice. There is every indication that the U.S. and much of the world are in a period of exile now.
"The prophetic message is not directly about partisan politics (which is far too dualistic); it is much more pre-political and post-political and has huge socio-political implications that challenge every side. Those who allow themselves to be challenged and changed will be the new creative leaders of the next period of history after this purifying exile."
I said that prophets see with God's Eyes. What do they see? Prophet Fr. Richard Rohr is uniquely American, and patriotic because he loves our country enough to see the ways in which we all must contribute to our country's growth in wisdom, justice, and compassion. He knows that we won't be truly great until everyone who lives here can grow to their full potential. That means that, as prophets, we not only have rights - we have obligations.
"I have begun to wonder if the new task of the first half of the twenty-first century should be a commitment to civil obligations as a balance to the focus on civil rights.
"Civil obligations call each of us to participate out of a concern and commitment for the whole. Civil obligations call us to vote, to inform ourselves about the issues of the day, to engage in serious conversation about our nation’s future and learn to listen to various perspectives. To live our civil obligations means that everyone needs to be involved and that there needs to be room for everyone to exercise this involvement. This is the other side of civil rights. We all need our civil rights so that we can all exercise our civil obligations.
"The mandate to exercise our civil obligations means that we can’t be bystanders who scoff at the process of politics while taking no responsibility. We all need to be involved. Civil obligations mean that we must hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, and we must advocate for those who are struggling to exercise their obligations. The 100 percent needs the efforts of all of us to create a true community.
"It is an unpatriotic lie that we as a nation are based in individualism. The Constitution underscores the fact that we are rooted and raised in a communal society and that we each have a responsibility to build up the whole. The Preamble to the Constitution could not be any clearer: 'We the People' are called to 'form a more perfect Union.'”
The prophets know that prayer comes first, but prayer leads to action. True prayer, contemplation, leads us directly into the heart of God so that we love all that God loves - and that is everyone and everything. There is no room for fear or avoidance in a prophet's life. Sr. Joan Chittister, who is also a prophet, says,
"A spiritual path that does not lead to a living commitment to . . . the Kingdom of God within and around us everywhere for everyone, is no path at all. . . . It is a dead end on the way to God. . . .
"Contemplation, you see, is a change in consciousness. It brings us to see the big picture. It brings us to see beyond our own boundaries, beyond our own denominations, beyond even our own doctrines and dogmas and institutional self-interest, straight into the face of a mothering God from whose womb has come all the life that is.
"To claim to be aware of the oneness of life and not to regard all of it as sacred trust is a violation of the very purpose of contemplation, which is an immersion in the God of life. To talk about the oneness of life and not to know oneness with all of life . . . is not contemplation. . . . Transformed from within then, the contemplative becomes a new kind of presence in the world who signals another way of being. . . . The contemplative can never again be a complacent, non-participant in an oppressive system. . . . From contemplation comes not only the consciousness of the universal connectedness of life, but the courage to model it as well.
"Those who have no flame in their hearts for justice, no consciousness of personal responsibility for the reign of God, no raging commitment to human community may, indeed, be seeking God; but make no mistake, God is still, at best, only an idea to them not a living reality. Indeed, contemplation is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God, it brings us, as well, face to face with the world, and then it brings us face to face with the self; and then, of course, something must be done. Something must be filled up, added to, freed from, begun again, ended at once, changed, or created or healed, because nothing stays the same once we have found the God within. . . . "We become connected to everything, to everyone. We carry the whole world in our hearts, the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the earth, the hunger of the starving, the joyous expectation every laughing child has a right to. Then, the zeal for justice consumes us. Then, action and prayer are one.
. . . "To be contemplative, we must have zeal for the God of love in whom all things have their beginning and their end. Fortunately, you will know when that happens to you, because you will find yourselves consumed with love not only for God but for everything and everyone God has created and who lives and is shaping this world right now. There is no clearer sign of real contemplation" (from "Prophets Then, Prophets Now," disc. 1.)
Ask yourself: does contemplation of the Word of God lead you to obedience to God's Word ALONE? Are you allowing the Fire of God's Word to consume your sins of indifference, lukewarmness, and fear of other's opinion or rejection? Are you allowing God's Word to enflame your heart with love and concern for everyone in this world, regardless of their color, sexual orientation, legal status, or whether they are American or not? Can you emotionally move beyond your own self-imposed boundaries to feel for the homeless, the jobless, the hungry, those without health insurance, the African and Indonesian as well as the American? Can your heart feel for the planet itself, which is suffering because of human abuse and neglect? Can you carry the whole world in your heart?
The time is NOW. God's Call to you is NOW. Sr. Joan talks about the prophet in you:
"A world gone badly askew stands on the cusp between authoritarianism and freedom, between universal compassion and national self-centeredness. It is a world scarred with violence, institutionalized fraud, rapacious human degradation, political suppression, economic slavery, and rampant narcissism. It is a world in wait. It waits for some wise and wild voices to lead us back to spiritual sanity. Our world waits for you and me, for spiritual people everywhere - to refuse to be pawns in the destruction of a global world for the sake of national self-centeredness." (from "The Time is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage.")