3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

Allow me to begin with a question; what is a prophet? Very often, we think of a prophet as someone who predicts the future, who can foresee what is going to come in the future. Actually, that really isn’t what we mean by a prophet. It has nothing to do with predicting the future. A prophet is one who speaks on behalf of God.

A prophet is called to be one who speaks as God speaks, bringing the message of God into our world, into the human family, into our lives. If we were to read the various book of the Prophets in the Old Testament, we can see that they contain words like “the word of the Lord was addressed to me”, “the Lord God says this” etc. 

Biblical scholars have pointed out that many of these prophetic writings were written not to predict some event but rather were written to give encouragement and serves as a reminder to the Israelites about the saving power of God. Even the book of Revelations, often seen as a portrayal of the end of the world, is a message of hope for those who were being persecuted during the early days of Christianity.

In today’s Gospel reading, we see Jesus reading from the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and saying that what the prophet proclaimed about a messiah is being fulfilled at that very moment. He is referring to himself as the fulfillment of that prophecy. A person who would bring the good news of God to the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed. This indicates clearly the role of Jess as prophet. This is what he was sent to do.

What about Mary then? Was she a prophetess? Scripture does not record her going around preaching and proclaiming messages from God but she is still a prophetess. How? She bore the Word of God in her body, she gave birth to the Word of God made flesh. Isn’t that too a way of bringing the good news of God to the people?

All of us who are baptized are also called to be a prophet. By virtue of our baptism, we are called share in the prophetic role of Christ in this world. By virtue of our Confirmation, we are filled with the Spirit of God to be his true witnesses. How then can we fulfill this role? 

Not all of have the gift of preaching, or to quote Bible verses automatically. But what we can do is to use the technology around us to spread the good news and to proclaim God’s word to those whom we know. It can be as simple as using our phones to send encouraging messages or quotes from the Bible to those who are down, or to use such things as Facebook to post quotes by the Saints. There are many ways to do this and who knows, through our little action we have set someone free from captive, to liberate them from the bondage of sin.

So today, we must ask ourselves, are we willing to carry out our prophetic, to follow Jesus the Prophet? We must pray that God will give us the ability to proclaim God’s Word wherever we are, not necessarily and most often not in words, but just to proclaim God’s way of love by the way we live out the Word of God.