26th Sunday 2024
Numbers 11:25-29; James 5:1-6; Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
I love those two characters who stay in the camp and prophesy there. Their names are Eldad and Medad, but they could be read as Eldad and me Dad (my Dad). I never thought of me Dad as a prophet, but so he was, and so was me Mum, and so am I, and so are you.
“If only the whole people of the Lord were prophets” says Moses “and the Lord gave His Spirit to them all”. You know what is coming now, don’t you? The whole people of the Lord ARE prophets, and the Lord HAS Given His Spirit to us all. It is there in the rite of Baptism, which I have quoted many times. It accompanies the anointing with the oil of chrism, the effective sign of the giving of the Holy Spirit: “As Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king, so may you live always as a member of His Body, sharing everlasting life”.
You then are a prophet—and also a priest and a king—simply through having been baptised, when the Holy Spirit was given to you; a giving reinforced, if you like, in the sacrament of Confirmation. What does that imply?
A prophet is someone who speaks for another—particularly for God—from the Greek prophemi “I speak for (or before)”. So we have been anointed to speak for God, to proclaim His word, to interpret what that word means in our lives and in the lives of others. In particular, it involves speaking up for what is right, speaking for justice, opposing evil, speaking the truth to power.
St. James gives us a classic example of prophetic speaking in today’s Second Reading, where he denounces the excesses of the rich, whose concern is to make themselves richer, and who do so at the expense of the poor, exploiting their workers, reducing their wages, denying them the just rewards of their labours. This is an issue as old as humankind itself: we find similar denunciations in the Hebrew prophets, especially Amos, who calls out those who, he says “trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the land”.
It is still a problem today, and one in which Catholic Social Teaching has long provided a prophetic voice. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical “Rerum Novarum” (“of new things”, though it could also be translated “of Revolution”) in which he quoted this passage from St. James in demanding just treatment for employees, and asserting their right to form Trade Unions, and to strike if necessary.
Ever since, successive Popes have issued encyclicals on social justice, thus building a large and systematic body of teaching. If governments and employers were to follow Catholic Social Teaching, the world would be a far juster place.
We cannot be complacent, though, for we live in the developed world which has long benefited from exploiting the poor and degrading the earth. Many of the genuine problems arising from immigration are the result of centuries of unjust treatment of the developing world, which has played a large part in creating situations leading to famine, drought, and unimaginable poverty. Every country in Europe, as well as the Americas, is now struggling with immigration on a massive scale, to which they must seek solutions which are not to be found in demonising the immigrants.
Tragically, the Church’s prophetic voice has been compromised by its role in the abuse crisis, becoming far too frequently, as Jesus says, an obstacle (scandalon) to bring down one of these little ones. The reaction of a number of bishops, in this country at least, has added to the damage; for a sizeable proportion of them, the priority is to “cover [their] own backs”, as one of them expressed it, with the result that, in addition to the offenders, innocent priests have been suspended and fraudsters have been encouraged to make false allegations. As well as seeking to root out abuse, we must also be prepared at times, to oppose scallywaggery on the part of bishops, another prophetic task.
Our prophetic role is not an easy one but we must not despair. God has given us His Spirit, as Moses prayed, and that same Spirit, dwelling and working within us, will guide us.
