Commentary on the Gospel of
NO ONE IS A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY
First of all, it is hard enough to be called to be a prophet. It is not something you choose to be. You are chosen to be such. But of course the kern of prophecy has been embedded in us since we are baptized. And if we are religious that kern has grown into a full blown plant. In our present society, there are many situations that call for our prophetic response. There is the chronic poverty that is caused not by lack of resources but by the unequal distribution of wealth and the foreign control of our economy. The endemic and systemic corruption that riddles our society from top to bottom daunting to say the least. When you try to awaken people to these evils in our society, in our homes, convents, or communities, people can oppose us, criticize us, become suspicious of us or even publicly denounce us. Since they know us or even grew up with us, they cannot believe that we have truly been converted from our egoistic selves and are now engaged in this altruistic endeavor. But we have to expect this. Like the biblical prophets we can have “our heads cut off” figuratively, but as I tell my co-activist: “Don’t worry, it will grow again.”
