August 26: Prophets / Profetas

A large portion of the Old Testament of the Bible is from Books of the Prophets. The word prophet means “to speak for.” A prophet, then, is someone who speaks for God. Specifically, when God wanted to speak to His people, He often chose someone to remind them of the covenant and its promises. In essence, the prophets were used by God to show the people to value and to practice what really mattered to God. One of the reasons it is important get to know these important spokespersons for God is so we can become prophets ourselves, each in our own way. 

In Matthew 23, 23-26, Jesus blames the Pharisees for insisting on trivia, such as the exact tithing of herbs while neglecting the core values of the Torah, such as justice, mercy, and faith. He stands, so to speak, in the line of the prophets who, again, showed their people to value and to practice what really matters to God.

Jesus invites us to keep returning to the essentials, to the heart of the Gospel, in order to know and do what God really wants of us. It would be hard to find a better statement of the basics than the three values stated by the prophet Micah and endorsed by Jesus: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) These were the values Jesus embodied in His life and in His death. To live by them is to “put on Christ,” which is our essential vocation as Christians.

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Tal como Cristo nos recomienda, prestemos atención en primer lugar a los puntos importantes de la ley, que son justicia y misericordia, fe y amor. Lo demás seguirá con facilidad.