One of the most frustrating experiences in life is when you have to deal with an individual or a group of people who won’t believe your story because it is too good to be true! In the scriptures we see the story of Noah, who warned the world that it had become too corrupt that if people didn’t change something bad would befall them. But no one would listen to Noah’s story of the coming floods except his immediate family. We have the Prophet Jeremiah that no one listened to, the Prophets Amos, Isaiah, and Micah—whose message was not taken seriously.
Bringing the word of God to people has always been difficult business. There has always been persecution, rejection, and even physical violence. The Scriptures speak of ridicule, unpleasant looks, being shut down, physical violence, false accusations before the authorities, imprisonment, and sometimes even being murdered.
The Problem for Prophets
In our First Reading drawn from the Book of Wisdom, we get a glimpse of the thought process of how persecution of the prophets worked: “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and calls himself a child of the Lord.” In the Gospel we heard that Jesus would not go about in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him given what he said about who he was, what his purpose was, and what God was asking of them. They “sought to arrest him” but his hour hadn’t yet come.
False Expectations
Part of what brings about challenges of openness to the word of God are false expectations. There are some people whom we think have a message for us and are worth listening to, and others whom we don’t think should be talking to us about anything. If we make up our mind about how and through whom God should speak to us, we may end up disappointed. This is because God has a way of speaking to us through people we least expect! There are observations or comments that children have made in our presence and proved that “From the mouths of infants and nursing babies” God spoke to us. Sometimes God speaks to us from directions we least expect, and therefore need to turn around and look in a different direction.
Listening to God's Voice
Is there a nagging voice of God inside your heart that has been trying to speak to you about a particular element of your life that you have tried to shut down over the years? What has the issue been about? What is God asking you to do about it?
Is there someone or people who tried to speak to you about an area of your life that needed improvement and you rejected their message or even turned against them? Who was that person God sent as a prophet to you? What was their message about? What can you do about their message during this Lenten time?
May we in this Mass ask God for His grace to be open to His message that comes to us through different directions and from different messengers. May we also ask Him for the grace to courageously stand amidst persecution when He sends us out to share His message in environments that might be challenging. Amen.
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