Prophecy is alive and kicking in the Church!

All of us who have been baptised are given an indellible mark or a permanent character that is a threefold particiption in Our Lord Jesus Christ as priest, prophet and king; for we are a royal people, a priestly people and a prophetic people. But are we really? Take for instance our prophetic character - are we at all prophetic? Are we not really pragmatic or pathetic be we clergy or Laity?

Moses promised the people of Israel that God will raise up prophets like him:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet [Deut 18:15].

Yet, though prophets did arise after Moses who were ‘like’ him, as in similar to him, John Bergsma says that none were equal to him which is the other meaning of the phrase ‘like’ him [cf his excellent commentary on Year B Sunday readings called ‘The Word of the Lord’ p.216]. The promises made by God, enunciated through the prophets, made to his people in the Old Testament have been fulfilled in the coming of Jesus in his life, death and resurrection. So since Our Lord Jesus’s coming, no new public revelation is to be expected, for the Lord God has revealed everything in sending His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ [Heb 1:1-4]:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

The call to prophesy has not ceased with the coming of Christ, though it has changed. Since Our Lord prophesied in his Eschatological discourse the End Times (Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21), is followed by St Paul’s prophecy about the rise of the Lawless Man [2 Thess 2:3-10] and is echoed in St John’s warning of the coming of the Anti-Christ [1 John 2:18-23] and presented in more detail in the Book of the Apocalypse, thus in the light of these texts we have a very Christian form of Prophecy.

Down through the centuries of the history of the Church prophecy, as a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church, has continued in a mode that is Christocentric but also Marian and Ecclesial. The gift of prophecy is Ecclesial because it occurs within the Church which is the Body of Christ in and through her members whose mission is to call all of humanity to salvation through the call to repentance; it also warns of a coming judgment [Krisis]; it does indeed prophesy chastisements for unrepented sins; and it is a call that prepares us all for the 2nd Coming of the Lord.

Indeed there is not only a Christocentric and Ecclesial dimension to prophecy since Pentecost Sunday but there is also Our Lady’s role and mission. As the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, she is also the Mother of all his beloved disciples beginning with the beloved disciple at the foot of the Cross in the Gospel of John [John 19:25-27] and thus she has had an extension of her vocation at the incarnation to one that follows after both her Domition and her Assumption.

Our Lady has shown that she is not just Queen of Apostles but also Queen of Prophets as her vocation after both her Dormition and her Assumption has been one of intervention, prophetically, in the life of the Church. In the history of the Church Our Lady has been calling her members, calling her children, as their spiritual Mother, to repent of their sins, follow her Son, obey the Will of the Father and make reparations for their dreadful sins and the dreadful sins of all humanity. Indeed she gives warnings and prophesies of chastisements to bring her children to return to God and become more faithful to her Son;

be those the apparitions at Ecuador [1594–1634] [https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/06/07/the-400-year-old-marian-apparition-that-is-particularly-relevant-today/ ];

at La Salette [1846], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1wiuuDvBqo&t=1488s&ab_channel=Mother%26RefugeoftheEndTimes ]

at Fatima [1917], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27POkfyTj30&ab_channel=DrTaylorMarshall ]

at Garabandal [1961-1965], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs-kNZYsYlQ&ab_channel=QueenofPeaceMedia ]

at Akita [1973], to name a few! [WATCH video: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=p1wiuuDvBqo&ab_channel=Mother%26RefugeoftheEndTimes];

There also the form of prophecy that derives from the mode of being a mystic within the life of the Church as in such figures like:

St Francis of Assisi [1181-1226];

St John Bosco [1815-1888] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlz7a7mdnm7RcbgKSoWWq-vV0tCf3cngB;

Breton Stigmatist Marie-Julie Jahenny [1850-1941] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5xTOOxwszo&ab_channel=ReturnToTradition );

St Faustina Kowalska [1905-1938].

So the gift or charism of prophecy is evident in the life of the Church. But there are also a new form of it arising from the Charismatic Renewal and here is a contemporary example which for instance, Ralph Martin of Renewal Ministries, posted in what he called an “amazing prophecy” given by Fr. Michael Scanlan in 1976—a year after the Prophesy in Rome [https://www.countdowntothekingdom.com/dr-ralph-martin-darkness-to-glory/]:

Son of man, do you see that city going bankrupt? Are you willing to see all your cities going bankrupt? Are you willing to see the bankruptcy of the whole economic system you rely on now so that all money is worthless and cannot support you?

Son of man, do you see the crime and lawlessness in your city streets, and towns, and institutions? Are you willing to see no law, no order, no protection for you except that which I myself will give you?

Son of man, do you see the country which you love and which you are now celebrating—a country’s history that you look back on with nostalgia? Are you willing to see no country—no country to call your own except those I give you as my body? Will you let me bring you life in my body and only there?

Son of man, do you see those churches which you can go to so easily now? Are you ready to see them with bars across their doors, with doors nailed shut? Are you ready to base your life only on me and not on any particular structure? Are you ready to depend only on me and not on all the institutions of schools and parishes that you are working so hard to foster?

Son of man, I call you to be ready for that. That is what I am telling you about. The structures are falling and changing—it is not for you to know the details now—but do not rely on them as you have been. I want you to make a deeper commitment to one another. I want you to trust one another, to build an interdependence that is based on my Spirit. It is an interdependence that is no luxury. It is an absolute necessity for those who will base their lives on me and not the structures from a pagan world. I have spoken and it will take place. My word will go forth to my people. They may hear and they may not—and I will respond accordingly—but this is my word.

Look about you, son of man. When you see it all shut down, when you see everything removed which has been taken for granted, and when you are prepared to live without these things, then you will know what I am making ready (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XnxThW3wq0&t=442s&ab_channel=RenewalMinistries ).

Now we also speak of the Church being called to be prophetic against unjust or evil powers and institutions in the world. Especially in a time when she must critique and counter the zeitgest of a given era. So we find what can be called a prophetic witness which is unafraid to speak out at a time when there is pressure to be silent. Such are the examples of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Pope Pius XII against the Nazis and Pope John Paul II against the Communist regime of the USSR in Poland.

Within the Church we also have prophetic witnesses. As found in say the prophetic witness of:

a Lay Catholic who tackles the contemporary issue of UFOs that seem to be hogging MSM, Internet podcasts and some Catholic bloggers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbI7t7zNLMs&t=25s&ab_channel=DanielO%27Connor ];

or a Lay Catholic who bravely tackles the issue of the crisis in the Catholic Priesthood in Ireland [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naZauBwqJPE&ab_channel=DecreviDeterminedtobeCatholic%40thecatholicman ];

or the Lay Catholic who tackles an issue within the Church, namely, how to receive Holy Communion in a Post-Covid Church [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV60cvgt_rM&t=579s&ab_channel=DecreviDeterminedtobeCatholic%40thecatholicman ].

So from the above we find that Prophecy is still very much alive and kicking in the Catholic church despite the mess, the chaos, the disorder and divisions that besets the Church and it is the prophetic mode that makes us witnesses to hope and at the same time at a mystical or spiritual level it carries us through the way of purification, the way of illumination and the way of union with God!