In the first reading, God announces to the people, through Moses, that He will send a prophet who will speak His own words to them. And in the Gospel, we recognize that this promise, which was made in the Old Testament, is being fulfilled in Jesus.
In today’s world, we seldom call anyone a prophet. So, who is a prophet? Maybe some of us are qualified to be named a prophet. Then, what makes someone a prophet? It is not so easy to define precisely, in a few words or even in a couple of sentences, the entire connotation and the significance of the term “prophet”. In Exodus 4:16, God tells Moses that Aaron will be his prophet;
“He will speak to the people for you and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him”.
Therefore, primarily, a prophet is a “mouthpiece” of God.
The Hebrew word for prophet, Nabi, means speaking for another. But the term Ro’eh, which means “seer”, is also used to identify someone as a prophet or at least the meaning is implied. Therefore, a prophet has the ability to see through the eyes of God and foresee future events. And, he is not deceived by external appearances.
Scripture has several titles for a prophet: a man of God, a servant of God, an anointed of God, a watchman, and the Lord’s messenger. These titles show that a prophet is a leader of people, into whom God’s Spirit and God’s Word has entered and taken possession. The primary task of a prophet, therefore, is to love people in God’s way and seek the highest good for them. This means, he should be ready to condemn anything that does not lead people to God, the Highest Good. The prophet becomes the voice of the people when their voices are suppressed; he fights for justice when injustice rules; and, he becomes the shepherd for the shepherd-less. Finally, and essentially, he should be ready to die for his noble cause.
Every Christian who truly follows Jesus cannot help but be a prophet. Now the criterion to define a prophet is Jesus, because He is the true “mouthpiece” of God. And all of us, His disciples, are also prophets provided we conform our life to His.
-Fr. Ranjan D’Sa, OCD