We are prophets to the nations, like Jeremiah

Fr. Vincent Hawkswell

“Before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

God spoke these words, from this Sunday’s First Reading, to the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s role as a prophet brought him great suffering, so it is a relief to feel that God is not speaking these words to us.

However, our relief is unfounded. He is speaking to us. By baptism we became Christ’s full brothers and sisters: reborn, the Church says, from the same womb, namely Mary’s, and by the same father, God; adopted, it is true, but by our adoption given all the rights, privileges, and offices of God the begotten Son.

For example, St. Paul says that we become Christ’s co-heirs, inheriting with Him (or rather in Him) the Kingdom of His Father. St. Peter said even more: he said that we become “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people He claims for His own to proclaim the glorious works” of God. That is, we share in Christ’s royalty, His priesthood, and His “prophethood.”

A king has authority over others. Jesus is “the King of kings” because God the Father has given Him “full authority” in heaven and on earth.

A priest is one who offers sacrifice. Jesus is “our great high Priest” because He sacrificed Himself to God the Father.

A prophet is “one who speaks, acts, or writes under the extraordinary influence of God to make known the divine counsels and will.” Jesus claimed to be a prophet when He said, in the synagogue at Nazareth, “[God] has sent Me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to prisoners; to announce a year of favour from the Lord.” He then added, as recounted in the Gospel Reading, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

We are ‘christened’

In the Old Testament, kings, priests, and prophets were anointed. Anointing is the pouring of oil on someone or something in a religious ceremony so as to make it sacred. (For example, the altar and cornerstone of a church are anointed when the church is dedicated, and the hands of a priest are anointed when the priest is ordained.)

When Jesus stood up to read from Scripture in the synagogue at Nazareth and the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him, “He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon Me; therefore, He has anointed Me.’”

The very name Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, meaning anointed one. It is used to translate the Hebrew Meshiah, anglicized as Messiah, which also means anointed one. Hence our words christen and christening, referring to baptism.

In baptism God gives us all the rights, privileges, and offices of His begotten Son. Accordingly, after the actual baptism, the priest anoints the newly baptized on the crown of the head with sacred chrism (olive oil mixed with small amounts of balm or balsam which has been blessed by the bishop during the Chrism Mass the previous Holy Thursday).

At the same time he prays, “God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into His holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king, so may you live always as a member of His Body, sharing everlasting life.”

Bearing witness

Yes, the words addressed to the prophet Jeremiah in the First Reading are addressed to us. We, ourselves, today, are called on to speak, act, or write under the influence of God to make known His commandments and His will for human beings.

How do we do it? We do it by what we say and what we do not say, by what we do and what we do not do, by the movies we watch and those we refuse to watch, by the books we read or do not read, by what we wear, by the fact that we go to church at least every Sunday, etc.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “the whole of man’s history has been the story of our combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield, man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.”

Yes, life is a combat, but we must bear witness to God and His truth not in a spirit of combativeness, but in a spirit of love.

“If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing,” St. Paul says in the Second Reading. “As for prophecies, they will come to an end,” for at present “we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part.”

Our religion, which has the fullness of what God has revealed, is not a private, personal thing. We dare not keep it to ourselves. We must never be ashamed to tell others what we believe; we are offering them the word of life.