Prophets and Profits

Fr. Tony Lalli shared some thoughts on the gospel of Matthew 7:15-20 “Beware of False Prophets”
When you surf through your television channels or scan through the wavelengths of your radio, you are unavoidably confronted with people who call themselves prophets.
How do you distinguish he false ones from the rue ones? The oldest known Christian manual, entitled Didache, written about 100 c.e., gives this rule of thumb: “If they ask for money for themselves they are false prophets.” Using this norm to discern the real prophets in the media instantly disqualifies most of them. Prophets and profit do not go together.
In his book Prophets, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel notes that real prophecy is born from the pathos or grief of God. Heschel writes that many of us read the Bible for a sense of order, but when you rad the prophetic part of it you get “Orations about widows and orphans, about corrupt judges and affairs of the market place. Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums. The world is a proud place full of beauty, but the prophets are scandalized, and rave as if the whole world were a slum.”
He then concludes by saying: “The things that horrify the prophets are even now daily occurrences all over the world.” The real prophets among us are those who are sharing God’s grief about the world in our days. They help us to listen to the cries of the poor, the neglected, the addicted, the abandoned, the hungry, and the thirsty. Real prophets are never out for personal benefits.