Jesus
warns us to beware of the false prophets in our midst. Yet, is it that easy to distinguish a false
prophet from one of God’s holy messengers? Well,
yesterday we celebrated the solemnity of the nativity of John the Baptist. He was a true prophet, recognized as such
from the time of his birth. We know that
he was asked by God to make the ultimate sacrifice for his faith – he was
beheaded for speaking the truth. And
speaking the truth is one of the signs of a true prophet. Speaking the truth sometimes means that the
prophet challenges the people, that he pushes them beyond complacency and
beyond their comfort zone, that his message contains words that the people do
not want to hear. A false
prophet can disguise himself, to clothe himself in righteousness, to use that
righteousness to spread lies and rumors and to proclaim a message that is not
the Word of God. Jesus
says that prophets can come disguised as sheep, but deep inside they can really
be wolves who want to destroy and tear down, rather than lift up and
build. Indeed, Jesus says we will know
the false prophets by their lack of fruits. Maybe
we need to ask ourselves: Do we know the word of God and the teachings of the
Church well enough to know when we are in the presence of a false prophet, to distinguish
those false prophecies from a message God wants us to hear? And a
lot of this is our responsibility. We
are called to properly inform our consciences as we journey in faith rather
than to make judgments on things of which we are ignorant.
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