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? Last Sunday, 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 – as a martyr, he was beheaded for speaking the truth. 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 that 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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