A Tale of Two Prophets

[A reflection on the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Western Rite), Sunday, December 22, 2024, which readings may be found here.]

Our culture views prophets as glorified forecasters and fortune-tellers, predicting the future (usually a grim one) with some weird, eldritch cast about them. Part of it is our poor familiarity with the Old Testament prophets, part of it are holdovers from our pagan cultural heritage both Germanic and Mediterranean, and part of it is pure Hollywood (sane, reasonable, well-groomed prophets not being that great of a box-office draw).

The Scriptural witness really is not about all that. There are some predictions, certainly, and some, well, bizarre behaviour (Jeremiah burying his undergarments comes to mind), but for the most part the job of the prophet is to communicate what God is thinking, what God finds important, and what God wants His people to be doing. Many future predictions were conditional, but much of that was to amend current behaviour to align with God's priorities: mercy, love, justice, righteousness, peace.

What is unusual in the Scriptural witness are female prophets, likely not because God did not bestow that grace upon women but likely because men were less inclined to write it down. Miriam sister of Moses was considered a prophet, Huldah from the late period of the Kingdom of Judah was also called a prophet, but there are two more often not considered to be a prophet who most clearly fit the bill: Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah the Priest and mother of John the Baptist, and Mary, the Mother of Our Lord.

It is in the story of the visitation that this fleshes out. Upon their meeting, Elizabeth is "filled with the Holy Spirit", a certain sign of prophetic utterance, and Mary utters the Magnificat, a recast of Hannah's prophetic prayer when told she would bear the prophet Samuel (oh, wait, there's another female Old Testament prophet...). Elizabeth calls out Mary to be the Mother of the Messiah, much as her son John later calls out Jesus to be the Messiah. Mary responds back with a hymn and prayer of God's everlasting justice and mercy. Together they proclaim God's visitation to His people within their visitation together, truly a prophetic act.

Today many of us content ourselves with reading the stories of the prophets and ignore the prophets among us today proclaiming the good news of God's will and God's message for us. Calls for justice for the poor and the marginalized, calls for the amendment of our lives to walk the paths of righteousness and love (NOT mutually exclusive, NOT only complementary, but in essence the same), and to look for the salvation of Our God. As we await our long-expected Messiah, commemorating his birth so long ago in Bethlehem, let us remember to hear the voices of the prophets, Mary and Elizabeth among them.