The Time Is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage

by Joan D. Chittister

“Instead,” he says, “let justice reign at the city gate.”

Irresponsible affluence and egregious corporate greed, xenophobia, and

malicious militarism anesthetize the modern mind as well. What would it take for religious prophets of our own time to risk their own public approval to call upon the soul of the nation

Prophets speak to reform the institution. It is a collision course of the heart.

compliance with church laws on the exclusion of divorced couples from the sacraments and so deny them spiritual comfort along the way. Women they dispose of as secondary to

God’s plan for discipleship despite even the model of Jesus and his openness to women as spiritual leaders. Governments stiffen when outsiders tell insider secrets.

Only a strong spiritual life, good friends, distance from the issue, and laughter really bring balm to the heart and renewed strength to the soul.

God is the one companion who understands

the feeling of emptiness that comes with repudiation by those from whom we had the...

This, the prophet is reminded, is simply one part of it. Beyond this moment lies the rest of what it is to be fully human.

Clearly, when the average, insightful, everyday prophet speaks, the Vision of God becomes present again and creation takes another leap forward.

She wrote, “I am your message, God. Throw me like a blazing torch into the night, that all may see and understand.”

all the elements of what it takes to be authentic in a world that play-acts at everything.

That kind of struggle between the Word of God and the hypocrisy of those who pretend to be just—but are not—has been the basis of popular protest for centuries.

The prophetic act is always done for the good of others: To save lives in unjust wars. To save fetuses from wanton destruction.

The prophet sets out to address an issue—not to annoy, irritate, and disgust the people whose attention is key. The prophet is loud, clear, and nonviolent. There is nothing self-serving in the actions of the prophet.

The prophet does not set out on such courses of action in the interests of self-aggrandizement. These are not publicity seekers who are looking for personal fame.

themselves in such physical and social jeopardy to achieve a kind of cheap and useless fame. They are not out to make a profit from their risk of personal reputation and welfare.

Most of all, the prophet is not impetuous, not a rabble-rouser, not emotionally overwrought or psychologically unbalanced. Instead, the prophet is deeply immers...

The prophet is a living example of the spiritual life with a purpose as large as the life around it.

The prophet calls us to the best of what we say we are. The prophet confronts us with the deep-down great goodness of our common call to holiness, to love of neighbor, to commitment to the life of the whole world.

Whatever life was like before the prophet raises a voice, it will never be the same again. Change begins with the first clamor of discontent and disapproval.

Because the prophet has dared to tear away the veil that hides the face of evil

Patience says to stay the course. The questions can go on for months. The dialogue surrounding each will be important.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself. He

must act in spite of it and it will gradually yield to him.” Sadly but only gradually. After the ground has been prepared and the seeds planted, this harvest of good can break through

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within

you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” HARRIET TUBMAN

It is in God alone that we must put our trust, abandon all our ambitions, and simply allow things to

There is no such thing as failure in the journey to the Reign of God.

the prophet wins the day, shaking up one

heart, one Gospel at a time. Those who do not do the journey can never know the beauty of discovering what it means to be beyond the greed, outside the violence, beyond the entrapment

Better to fail, in fact, than to have missed the freedom of heart that comes with speaking Truth ...

neighborhood, one hundred percent of the children are

Jeremiah argued, instead, that the presence of God depended on the character of the people, not on the

presence of their shrines.

One generation of prophets

seeds the next. As the Shaker Antoinette Doolittle puts it, “Every cycle has its prophets as guiding stars; and they are the burning candles of God to light the spiritual temple on earth,

for the time being. When they have done their work, they will pass away; but the candlesticks will remain, and oth...

Trust those whose heart has been formed in the scriptures and whose sincere commitment is to the coming of the Reign of God. Plato’s warning includes us, you and me, in other words.

They force us to see our own role in oppression—internationally, nationally,

In every period, the prophetic task was the same: to interpret the present in light of the Word of God

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”

Helen Prejean has been walking men on death row to electric chairs and gas chambers for years. But she has also been spending all the time between those moments

the prophet leads the most human of human souls.

Our deserts are now no wider, no longer, no less difficult to traverse. Neither is it magic nor money that will get us there.

“Who am I,” Moses insists, “that I should go to Pharaoh?” And God says, “I will be with you and this will be your sign.”

To deny the

abilities I’ve been given—thought, insight, wisdom, analysis, understanding, explanation, persuasion—is a virtual sin against creation.

It withholds from the human community the very gifts I have been free...