I love the line from the First Reading today from Moses – would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow His Spirit upon them all!
I love that line, because that’s exactly what has already happened to us. We are blessed to have a Baptism again this weekend – and at our own Baptism this Spirit of God came upon us. We so neglect to enter into what that really means. The Spirit of God came upon us and consecrated us as priests, prophets and Kings, conformed to Jesus.
We are priests, because we offer sacrifice – all the sacrifices of our lives that we offer to God; we are Kings, because we order our lives rightly, we govern ourselves after obedience to the true King; but we are also Prophets. And I think that is something we don’t think about nearly enough.
You and I have been anointed by the Holy Spirit to proclaim with our lives the Truth of the Gospel – that by what we do, how we live, what we say, all of it is supposed to give witness to Jesus Christ. Does it? Do we live out the prophetic role that has been given to us? It’s not an option, it’s an expectation.
Monday we celebrate one of my favorite Saints, Therese of Lisieux. If you don’t know about her, you gotta read about Therese. She was a Carmelite Nun who died at the age of 24. And she is a Doctor of the Church, because she has so much to teach us – especially about being prophets.
She teaches us her ‘little way’ – that through the ordinary everyday moments of our lives we can serve God faithfully – we can allow our lives to bear witness to Jesus – by what we say, and don’t say, by what we do and don’t do – we are prophets by picking up the ordinary crosses of our lives and carrying them faithfully following after Jesus. That is such a powerful witness.
Therese knew that – because she knew Jesus intimately. She allowed His Spirit to empower her. She lived the consecration of her Baptism as a Prophet of Jesus Christ.
You and I, well, we stink at that. Because we lack her missionary zeal. We lack a closeness to Jesus, a deep intimacy with Him that calls us to embrace His Spirit and live out the most important thing that will ever happen to us in this life or the next, the consecration of our Baptism – the moment we were conformed to Jesus for all eternity. Nothing is more important than that.
How is Jesus calling you to be a prophet, to live your life as a living witness to the faith, a living witness to the Gospel, a living witness to the Truth? The call is there, for each of us, in our everyday ordinary lives to be faithful witnesses to God and to allow that to speak a profound prophetic message to the world – Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets. We already are. Would that the Lord might bestow his Spirit on them all. He already has. Now what do we do with it? God help us all. +
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