The Time Is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage

by Joan D. Chittister

This choice, in other words, is to crawl into a comfortable cave with nice people and become a church, a culture, a society within a society.

It is to risk, as the prophets did, not really being heard at all—at least not until long after the fact.

The prophet is the person who says no to everything that is not of God. No to the abuse of women. No to the rejection of the stranger. No to crimes against immigrants. No to the rape of the trees. No to the pollution of the skies. No to the poisoning of the oceans. No to the despicable destruction of humankind for the sake of more wealth, more power, more control for a few.

Indeed!

It is the spirituality of awareness, of choice, of risk, of transformation. It is about the embrace of life, the pursuit of wholeness, the acceptance of others, the call to co-creation.

the prophets support tradition but are wary of traditionalism. They know what it is like to be suffocated under the weight of meaningless laws when the soul is crying out loud for a new vision of leadership.

They know what happens to a society—and to a church—that forfeits the breadth and impact of its spiritual perspective in its adherence to a single issue religion. They know what happens to the faith when it concentrates only on selected sins and allows sins like social injustice to suffocate, suppress, and silence the rest of the commandments.

The prophets care about leadership. They know that civil leaders lay burdens on the backs of the vulnerable in order to make the already comfortable sinfully affluent.

They care about poverty and decry it, about violence and condemn it, about religion and set out to purify it of its arrogance, its false faith, and the emptiness of its rules and rituals.

But they also know that the will of God is what brings good and joy and happiness and equality into a world that suffers from the lack of it.

They are more committed to the Word of God than they are to acceptance by those who claim to be the guardians of the Word of God but betray its meaning.

What will you do here and now, in this world, in our time? Simply stand there looking on?

Because underneath it all, something else lingers and will not go away, is still heard in the recesses of the soul and calls us over and over and over.

To follow Jesus means that we, too, must each do something to redeem our battered, beaten world from the greed that smothers

In fact, we often ignore, resist, reject the idea that, like Jesus, we have a role to play in righting a world whose axle is tilting in the wrong direction.

We refuse to accept the notion that to turn the compass points of our worlds back to the True North of the soul is what it means to be truly spiritual.

Christianity requires, as well, that we each be so much a prophetic presence that our corner of the world becomes a better place because we have been there.

The prophets were ignored by the very ones to whom the messages were addressed, the ones who could have averted the disasters that followed.

Every prophet contemplated the price of the risk and went on regardless—calling to the world to become its best self—and so must we.

charity without prophecy can serve only to make the world safe for exploitation.

The person with the soul of a prophet sees what the rest of the world either cannot see or does not want to see, and uses that vision as a compass through life.

The prophet believes that justice is achievable, that despite all our differences, we can become community again. So the prophet refuses to divide people into white and black, Republicans and Democrats, Americans and foreigners.

world. So, to the rank and file of humanity, prophets look mad. They look wild.

Catherine of Siena said centuries ago, “Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.” Dorothy Day said in our own time, “Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful.”

Today’s prophets prepare for the reconstruction of society by imagining the achievable and drawing others to see it as well.

The old order—decaying and disturbing—must go in order to make room for the new.

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” —JOHN A. SHEDD

The signs of it are clear: “That issue is political, not religious” we begin to hear as groups attempt to divorce spiritual obligations from political policies. Or, we hear “That’s not our role” as groups attempt to justify the distance of spiritually defined groups from social issues.

"Stay in your lane."

It is a searing attack on false piety, on those who oppress the poor on one hand but give to religious institutions on the other. To those who ignore the poor on one hand but wear prayer beads on the other.

Do we do any small thing to participate in binding up the wounds of the world?

When the institutions lose their way and ignore their own reasons for existence, they become the problem rather than the solution to social ills.

Institutions are forever alert to their traitors for fear that exposure of an open wound would upend the entire enterprise.

Mother Maria Skobtsova, an Eastern Orthodox monastic, lives at the core of the prophetic mind-set. She wrote, “I am your message, God. Throw me like a blazing torch into the night, that all may see and understand.”

In this era, we watch con men define themselves as wealthy when their accountants know that they owe more than they could ever pay. We watch politicians posturing from one interview to the next, pretending to have answers though nothing changes for the people they serve. We see television personalities posing as experts, as if they really had the influence with which they’re credited. We watch bureaucrats in big cars pretending to be important. We see resident critics come and go, waiting for the “next big thing” to analyze and destroy before we even get a chance to try it. It’s all show.

What sky do we light up so that others may find their way to new peace and clear justice in a violently unjust world?

Change is not much acceptable to the powers that be, the powers that profit from life skewed and kept soundly suppressed.

The prophetic insight never wanes, even when it is not wanted and despite the fact that it is not being heard.

“The wise speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something.”

Plato

The prophet does not come to condemn those who think differently about a thing; the prophet comes to warn, to persuade, to enlighten.

The prophet’s call is to unite the world in an honest understanding of the Word of God for humankind.

In every period, the prophetic task was the same: to interpret the present in light of the Word of God so that new worlds could be envisioned and new attitudes developed that would eventually make the world a better place.

They are always disturbingly different, always stirring up the consciousness of those left behind, always confronting a world that obstructs them, always on a path toward the Kingdom rather than the palace.

faith leads us from the dregs of despair to trust again in possibility. It takes the fear that comes from insight and turns it into the conviction that the world must change, that I must change, that I must have something to do with changing it.

Faith drives us on, trusting in a future we cannot see but are bound to pursue if our own humanity is ever to come to the fullness Creation designed it to be. No doubt about it: the prophetic vision demands more than insight alone. It demands a steel-willed determination to do something, however little, to bring that awareness to life. If the world in which we live is to be a better one, our spirituality must be about more than seeing what needs to be done. It’s about doing something about what is lacking. It’s about standing up and speaking out, the lone voice in the room, if necessary, the voice that the others ignore—or worse, laugh at.

The prophet is no leader of corporations or armed forces; the prophet leads the most human of human souls.

Our task is to change the opinions of people whose lives have become quietly given over to profit and power rather than to the people who have made their status and wealth possible.

To deny the abilities I’ve been given—thought, insight, wisdom, analysis, understanding, explanation, persuasion—is a virtual sin against creation. It degrades the virtue of humility to a kind of debased self-knowledge. It withholds from the human community the very gifts I have been freely given for its good. Worse, it denies life the effort it takes to make such gifts real. Having gifts is nothing if we don’t use them. To praise the Creator for seeding the universe with them is bogus if we ourselves fail to use them to their limits. It is a sin against creation.

There is a moment in the life of the reluctant prophet that we begin to understand, too, what da Vinci meant when he warned us, “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

To be on the way to a new land in the name of the God of Abraham and Moses, Mary and Joseph, gives new meaning to life. By all means, go. Simply remember as you go, that you have already seen the Promised Land in your heart. Know that you, too, are led by the charism to find it. Realize, then, that whatever the cost, the pain of the way is worth it. This great moment of rejection happens for a reason. Sometimes it is about sending you on a path you would not travel but without which you can never complete the enterprise. And even if not that, it is about your own opportunity to evolve beyond your old self. There is nothing but growth and insight and wisdom on this road. Be not afraid.

past. It is the revelation seeking to be born again in you, through you newly, for which you go on.

Prophecy is about being a clear voice about a specific need. It is about identifying the clouding forces on the human horizon.