Many of you here will remember the late Fr. Gerard Cunnane who served in this church for many years. He died eighteen months ago. He had a brother called Willie who worked as Parish Priest with the Kiltegan Fathers in the Philippines. President Marcos was ruling with an iron fist in that country and many of the younger clergy were actively opposing him. They led sit-down protests at functions which Marcos was expected to attend, threw eggs at his ministers and that sort of thing. Willie Cunnane had two curates who were very actively involved politically. One of them became well known later on, Fr. Niall O'Brien. The other was Father Brendan O'Connell. Over a period of a year, Willie Cunnane claimed to have spent over one hundred and fifty days of the three hundred and sixty five in the local police station, seeking to bail out either one or other of his curates. In frustration he sent a telegram to the bishop in Manila which read: "God's Kingdom and Cunnanes health are in jeopardy. Please send on two less zealous curates."
This little story captures in a small way the tensions that exist between the priest and the prophet. In ancient Israel, the three principal offices in the land were Priest, Prophet and King. The king ruled, obviously; the priest led worship in the temple; and the prophet annoyed the hell out of the king and the priest. The prophet was very much the hurler on the ditch; I heard Hiliary Clinton this morning describing a difficult friend of hers as 'having all the people skills of the porcupine'. The same could well be applied to the prophet. he stood apart from the religious and political institutions of the day. He saw himself, and other saw him, as an outsider, one who had no vested interests in the institutions of the day. He cast a cold eye on the doings of the priest and the King. He saw his function as highlighting injustices in the system, confronting unworthy priests and facing down tyrannical kings, regardless of personal cost. You would get the impression that a prophet wouldn't sleep at night if he hadn't berated at least three establishment figures that day. Obviously then, prophets were not hugely popular in Israel. Many of them died at the hands of those whom they criticised.
But prophets are not confined the religious institutions, or exclusive to the field of religious endeavour or interest. Nelson Mandela is a good example of a contemporary prophet. He spelled out the situation in his own country as he saw it. He highlighted the sins of the political leaders and the hardships visited upon the common people. But, crucially, he was prepared to suffer for his beliefs. He spent almost thirty years in jail for his beliefs. The is the mark of an authentic prophet. Prophets are difficult men; but not all difficult men are prophets. This distinction is not always appreciated!
This is the tradition in which Jesus walked. He saw his role clearly as a prophet. And he behaved consistently as a prophet, distancing himself from the institutions, both religious and political, exposing the tyranny of Roman rule and the empty shell that was the Jewish priesthood. From the very beginning of his teaching career Jesus experiences rejection. The extract is taken from early in Mark's gospel: "A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and his own house." Jesus is rejected first by his own people. But he will be forced to revise this conclusion. Rejection will not be confined to his own people. He will discover that the entire country rejected him. But he did not let that rejection get in his way. He doggedly pursued the truth as he saw it.
Inevitably, the Church which he founded in turn became an institution. The institutional Church is not at all comfortable with the prophetic voice, with criticism from within. At priests meetings, you often hear remarks like: isn't that typical of your man. Here we go again. If a voice is in any way challenging, if it forces people to look at things in a different way, the voice is dismissed as that of a crank, a malcontent. The mere voices of the carpenter's son. Unless the voice of the prophet is cherished, the message grows stale. Cunnane's zealous curates had something going for them after all.
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