Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - The Prophetic Tradition_092919

Deacon Tom Writes,

The Prophetic Tradition

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

The Prophet Amos who speaks to us in our first reading today was a shepherd of Tekoa in Judah during the prosperous reign of Jeroboam II from 786-746 B.C. For several weeks now we have heard him speak of the injustices against the poor and the complacency of the people of his day. Like all prophets, his messages were very unpopular. Amos told the people that there would be a day of reckoning for how they treated the poor. He foretold a time when God would destroy Jerusalem and send his people into exile. The fulfillment of this prophecy took place in 597 B.C., an event history records as the Babylonian Captivity.

Amos belonged to a very special group of Old Testament authors known as the Minor Prophets. Included in this genre of very irritating people are Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Prophets were irritating because they delivered unpopular messages. The messages they delivered were not their own, but God’s. Prophets encouraged the people to return to God and be faithful to him. Not surprisingly, these individuals also foretold the dismal consequences that awaited the people of Israel for their prideful disobedience and unfaithfulness to God. Inherent in the prophetic message, however, was always a call to turn away from sin and return to the love of God.

It has been thousands of years since the Old Testament Prophets spoke out against the evils of their times. Yet, the passage of time has not silenced the need for the people today to hear and take seriously the prophetic messages being spoken to us. Fortunately, there are those among us today who continue to speak prophetically about the poor and suffering among us. They remind us that the poor are still being treated unjustly through limited access to quality education and health care; they point out that racism and discrimination still prevail in many facets of our society; they shed light where immigrants are being exploited. Prophetic voices today remind us that we, like the people of Amos’s day, or like Lazarus in today’s gospel, do not see the injustice and suffering of those around us. It seems that the real sin we all face today in our comfort and our abundance is that the poor and the needy have become invisible to us or worse yet, we have become indifferent to the “cries of the poor”. We have pushed the suffering souls to the fringes of our society so that our paths will seldom cross or our eyes will never meet.

Let us give thanks for the likes of St. Teresa of Calcutta, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Merton, Sr. Helen Prejean, Desmond Tutu, Henri Nouwen, Jean Vanier, St. John Paul II, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dorothy Day to name but a few faithful and courageous souls whose lives and witness have helped keep the embers of the prophetic tradition smoldering in our times. They have helped enlivened the spirits of so many others to continue to do the irritating work of the prophets who have gone before us.

May we listen to their words and respond faithfully to the "cry of the poor".

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom