Posted on 04/05/2008 7:37:22 AM PDT by markomalley
All Catholics are baptized priests, prophets and kings, though only some of us go on to the fullness of any of these roles. Very few of us are kings in the Davidic sense, but all of us lead and govern others to some limited degree. Relatively small numbers of Catholics are called to the fullness of the special priesthood, yet we all offer sacrifices (and participate in the Sacrifice) to bear fruit in the economy of grace. And as far as prophecy goes, while we hope to say what God wants us to say, very few of us are in a position to state with certainty that we have spoken only what was given to us by God. Still fewer will prophesy in any publicly verifiable way, accompanied by marvelous signs or proven unmistakably by future events. The Minor Prophets Having recently reread the four giants of Biblical prophecy (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel), I’ve now turned my attention to the twelve minor prophets. As always I am using the Navarre Bible (the Standard Edition including both texts and commentaries) because the commentaries include not only relevant information drawn from historical criticism but also the insights of the saints and especially the Fathers of the Church. I’ve been going through the entire Old Testament in slow spiritual reading over the past couple of years. The Minor Prophets is the last volume.
Personally, I find the minor prophets encouraging. Each of the four major prophets takes up an entire scroll in the original texts, and all four together make one very fat volume in the series. By contrast, all twelve of the minor prophets fit on a single scroll, and the corresponding Navarre Bible volume is quite thin. If some future redactor boils down my millions of written and spoken words to their Divine essence (assuming there’s some inspiration somewhere), I’d be very pleased if what was left could fill a twelfth of a scroll. In fact, I’d be happy to keep up with Obadiah, who seems to have set the minimum bar for admission into the fraternity. His book consists of just twenty-one verses. Suddenly the challenge seems possible. Who are these minor prophets? Those with a better Catholic education than my own will doubtless have learned some mnemonic device to help them remember the whole group. It’s too bad that the order varies in the different sources, but that’s a minor point. The truth is that in some cases the historical identifications of both the prophet and the precise period are difficult to determine. Here’s the order as given in the Navarre Bible:
Source of Encouragement The minor prophets are encouraging in many ways (and not just because of their appealing littleness). Prophets came in a variety of forms in Israel, and many were members of families with a tradition of prophecy; these were, in effect, professional prophets, recognized as such, and organized into more or less official advisory groups. Too often such prophets simply told the rich and powerful what they wanted to hear. True prophets, called from both the professional ranks and from far outside those ranks, often denounced this fundamental falseness, this speaking in God’s name without speaking God’s message. It was regarded as a grave sin which God would punish before he punished many other things.
Without commenting again on particular problems of ecclesiastical leadership in our own day (for truly similar problems must inevitably afflict every age), and remembering that true and courageous prophets were sometimes drawn from the professional ranks, I think it must always be a source of encouragement to Catholics that God’s inspiration is not confined to His official representatives. All of us little ones, like the minor prophets, can seek holiness, speak the truth and inspire others no matter how the professionals may behave, as indeed we are all called to do. Those in the lower ranks of the clergy should feel the same encouragement if their superiors are unexemplary. Indeed, as time went on all the books of the Old Testament, and especially the later prophets, increasingly reveal that virtue and vice, along with the reward or punishment attached to them, are primarily personal, though they necessarily have a corporate dimension. While those in leadership positions bear a grave responsibility, the prophets gradually unfold a clear picture of personal responsibility, showing that in the end each one of us is responsible for his own faithfulness to the Covenant, his own choice to be for or against God. It is instructive to see this idea develop from the earlier emphasis on the sins of fathers being visited on their children (as indeed they are in many ways) to the later emphasis on the judgment of each person, based ultimately on his own commitment to the Most High God, his own life of truth and fidelity, love and service—or his own flight from God into sin, failure and wretchedness. The Central Prophetic Message The central message of the prophets, which is clearly and concisely evident in the minor prophets, is their interpretation of events in light of God’s plan of salvation. Most prophetic books stress the two sides of “the day of the Lord”, when God will finally and definitively conquer evil and restore good. It becomes clear that each and every person is to anticipate both aspects of this “day”—both the terror of the judgment and the everlasting peace of salvation and restoration. Accordingly the prophets continually denounce sin—both personal sins and the unjust institutional situations which widespread personal sin creates—and they announce God’s impending punishment, not just on Israel but on all the nations. They interpret present sufferings as consequences of sin and infidelity (with the complexity of that relationship increasingly grasped over time). Most importantly, they teach that all suffering and all Divine punishment have but a single purpose: to stir us to repentance, to cause us to return to the Lord. Through the minor prophets, God reveals Himself as the Father we defy and the Husband whom we betray. His love is so deep that He punishes only to make us realize our dependence, so that He can shower us with love, blessings, prosperity, joy and peace. The message itself is certainly encouraging, but the manner in which it is delivered also carries encouragement. For we hear this message in as many different voices as there are minor prophets. One may emphasize the sins of “the nations”, another the shortcomings of Israel, a third the Providence of God, a fourth His fidelity to the Covenant, a sixth the steadiness of God as Father, a seventh the passion of God as Lover—a Tremendous Lover, in fact, whom the minor prophets sometimes foretell. This then is also the message Catholics are called as prophets to speak, in season and out of season. There are a thousand ways to speak it. All of us are called to speak the appropriate word: To denounce sin and explain why it is wrong; to unveil suffering as God’s means to alternatively bring us to our senses, purge us of our sins, and draw us into ever closer union with Himself; to connect the frightful situations in which we and our neighbors find ourselves with God’s loving Providence; to warn others of the impending judgment while holding out the promise of ultimate restoration. Yet like the minor prophets, each of us is in a different circumstance, with different gifts, dealing with different kinds of people. Sometimes a rousing denunciation of sin is desperately needed; at other times we must offer a vision of love and forgiveness so as not to break the bruised reed. As with the minor prophets, our message may be starkly harsh or creatively gentle. It may be militant or tender. We may be relentless reporters or imaginative geniuses. We may emphasize now one side of the message, now another, but the point is always the same: to draw men back to God, to bring them home. This is the essence of prophecy, and it doesn’t matter whether we can work miracles or predict future events. It matters only that we stop running away like Jonah and turn toward our own Nineveh with God’s message in our heart and on our lips. What matters is that we understand the very deepest reality, that the day of the Lord begins in suffering and fear only so that it can end in ecstatic love. This is our message—the message which all of us, baptized prophets, must never fear to speak. |
Thanks for posting. I had a revelation while reading this! I have a men’s group that does Bible study and one of the guys in it is an old man. We did Isaiah and then Daniel, then I mentioned that I’d like to study John last time, so we’ve studied John, and now in discussing what to do next he’s mentioned Jeremiah or the minor prophets. I didn’t put two and two together but he’s interested in studying the prophets.
I read a chapter or more of the Bible to my family every day; we just pick a book and go through it, and then choose another, and so on. The minor prophets come up every couple of years, and I always enjoy them. Such beautiful language and spiritual insights. I love Ezekiel, too.
You’ve got your own small group for a Bible study right there in your family my fertile FRiend. Since I got what I wanted last time in studying one of the gospels I’m just going to keep my mouth shut this time and let the rest of the group decide what they want to study. It’s a major project for us to do a book, takes a half year, year to get through it with one meeting a week. I’m fine with the prophets especially now that I know what he’s aiming for . . .
It sounds fun. I generally do Bible study by myself, but the older children will bring up what we’ve read during the day (especially if it’s something with lots of action, like “Kings”!). If we get into issues I’m not competent to discuss, I’ll say, “Go get the Navarre Bible Commentary off the shelf and tells us all what you learn!”
We’re reading the Gospel of Luke now. I like to go through all four Gospels every year. Luke has very long chapters.
I have led groups on Acts, Isaiah, the synoptic Gospels, Exodous, Early Letters of Paul, Isaiah, Revelation, and Women of the Old Testament which we are doing right now. (Think I got them all!)
I would like to three right now, hard to choose!
Daniel
Psalms
Gospel of John
Going to pray about this, because I am still at three and can’t seem to narrow it down.
I also lead a weekly, year-around faith-sharing group that prepares for the next Sunday by reading and praying/reflecting on the readings for the oncoming Sunday!
Keeps me out of trouble!
I also lead a weekly, year-around faith-sharing group that prepares for the next Sunday by reading and praying/reflecting on the readings for the oncoming Sunday!
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To me, that sounds like a really good practice with the Catholic mass. Putting in the work beforehand must enrich the service.
**Putting in the work beforehand must enrich the service.**
Absolutely. Often we touch some of the same issues that the priest covers in his homily. But he is so dynamic that we are the ones who feel honored.
Gosh, any of those would be good.
I am only one vote and since I will be in the hospital, I won’t be able to vote or voice my opinion on our next series.
I’m just hoping we get something other than “Women of the New Testament.” I think that can wait awhile.
Daniel
Psalms
Gospel of John
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I’ve enjoyed each book we studied but for some reason Daniel was the most enriching for me from the group study. Isaiah 53 and John 1 are so wonderful though . . . My group has avoided the Psalms, in part I think because we would take three or four years to get through them.
Daniel is a book where the stories are so vivid that it’s easy to keep a childish, Sunday school version of them in your thougths even as an adult. Of course on study the prophecies are absolutely impossible to sort out absent inspiration from the Holy Spirit, and since the book is sealed . . . well . . . Isaac Newton thought he had a special insight into Daniel and duty to study it and make sense of it and its end times prophecies but he chose not to reveal what he came up with because he believed that the time had not come for the world to understand them.
Some writings by Newton on Daniel are out there on the net. He predicted the end times about 40 years from now by the way and for what it is worth!
We used a study by Tremper Longman III for Daniel which was truly excellent in my opinion. He avoided the flights of fancy which many commentators take when dealing with prophetic books, where the commentator substitutes his visions for those in the book and did a great job of fleshing out the history of the times of Daniel and translation issues and such so that the stories of the lions den and the furnace and the writing on the wall and so forth were seen in an adult light, full complexity. Daniel is a strange book, with vivid simple stories for 6 chapters and then prophecy — which is good for a study group because you’ve got two totally different “styles” in one short book for the group.
You’d probably get drummed out of the study for foisting a Reformed commentary on it, but Longman’s was very good.
I hope you have a quick recovery from whatever ails you! No fun being in the hospital, unless you get to bring home a baby :-).
No fun being in the hospital, unless you get to bring home a baby :-).
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LOL. Seen from the other end of the birthing bed it doesn’t look like much fun to me! I’ll be praying for you Salvation. Hope you are visiting the hospital or something minor.
It’s fun after the baby is born, because you get to lie around for a couple of days, with people bring you your meals, and no laundry to do.
I saw on another thread that Salvation is having a hip replacement. I hope it goes well.
I’m bringing home a bionic hip! Should be great not to have the pain.
Just say a prayer to guide the surgeon at 9:30 Pacific on Monday, april 14th.
And thanks in advance for those prayers.
Good luck with the bionic hip. I’m praying for you.
A week from Monday - I’d better get it on the calendar. That’s a long time for me :-).
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