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Prophet: The Much-Needed Archetype (Part 1)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role and the need for the “prophet,” especially considering the turmoil, instability, and the gratuitous violence I see unfolding in the world. It’s always been there, both the need for the prophet and the violence. However, the grease lightning speed at which we are bombarded with news (both media and social media) and the fact that we have a narcissist, a highchair tyrant, leading America, makes me inwardly scream out to God, “Send us your prophets, like the prophets of old, and let us listen to them!”

Lying deep within us, in our subconscious, live archetypes. Archetypes are ruling images deep inside every person’s soul. (If you ever stood for something important, if you ever drew the line in the sand and said, “beyond this point I won’t go,” you were accessing the Warrior archetype). Archetypes lie dormant in the soul, and for the most part we are not consciously in touch with them. Usually a profound experience is the catalyst that wakes us up to one  archetype or another. One such archetype is the “prophet.” Although the archetype of the prophet is universal, isn’t it interesting that when you were baptized you were anointed as priest, prophet, and king (queen)?  It’s no coincidence that the Church recognized this archetype of prophet in each person and associated it with the mission we receive in baptism. To be a follower of Christ is to take seriously our identity as prophet. So, my cry to God is not only that God would send prophets into the world but also to make me into the prophet I was baptized to be. This energy is in all of us. It is needed for the good of the world, and it is needed now.

Sometimes the world stops cooperating with the illusory beliefs of what we thought it was. The harshness of reality quickly teaches us that God has not arranged life for our convenience. While I can easily change the T.V. channel I’m watching, what I cannot do is sugarcoat or wish away the reality of children and parents living in bombed-out buildings in Gaza or the Ukraine. I can’t de-select the feelings that emerge in me every time I see people, in my own town, living in tents. I can’t glaze over the government-issued killings in Minneapolis by ICE agents of their fellow citizens nor the deep-seated prejudices that underlie those killings. Sadly, it’s only the tip of the iceberg where violence and killing seem to be the only name of history. Only now the violence it’s legitimated as Making American Great Again and even “justified” as Trump’s distorted version of the gospel.

The desperately needed prophet calls us to a stripped-down clarity where we listen without asking, “What’s in it for me?” and we attend to another without the need for control. God and the prophet know how to stand in these tough places and not run.

The prophet doesn’t escape the harsh wilderness, but like John the Baptist (the greatest prophet according to Jesus), they agree to be changed by it. The prophet listens not to produce answers so much as to rearrange loyalties. Prophets do not just rail against what they are against, but they demonstrate what they are ultimately for. (What do I really stand for? What are we loyal to?). Prophets surrender to truth and allow suffering to be what it is rather than pretending that all is well. The late Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel, said that, “The prophet is always somewhat embarrassed to be alive while injustice persists.” Prophecy is not prediction but perception. Prophets refuse to stand in the middle ground between the way things are and the way things should be, and throw up their arms and says, “Oh, well. What can you do? That’s life.” The prophet in us refuses to abide there.

~Fr. Phil