Homily: August 1, 2022, Memorial of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

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How do we know if a prophecy is true? If the prophet is sent by God?

From the first reading we heard, “But the prophet who prophesies peace is recognized as truly sent by the LORD only when his prophetic prediction is fulfilled”.

Many prophets do not live long enough to see their prophesies being fulfilled, but they would gladly die to make sure their message was proclaimed as the Lord required.

When I was younger, we would pass by a kingdom hall of Jehovah’s Witness on our way to church. That was probably in the years 1995 to 1997. They would distribute flyers preaching about the end of the world. I remember one year, they predicted that the world would end on December 6. They invited people to join their congregation in order to be saved. They convinced them that they will be counted among the 144,000 holy people mentioned in the book of Revelation.

Some of my friends believed their prediction and hurried to do their reconciliation to get ready for the end date. My papa was calm, he quoted the Gospel, Jesus said that even the Son of man does not know when the end of time would be, only His Father in Heaven knows. We were cool about it, although we did get a little anxious as the date got nearer.

Nothing happened of course. From that we confirmed those were false prophets and prophecies. To this day, there are still self-proclaimed prophets making false claims about receiving messages from God to warn people about end times. These often cause spiritual disturbances and invoke unnecessary fear.

A true prophet is someone who delivers the message of God and would therefore never contradict what the Bible states.

In today’s readings, we see three prophets: Jeremiah, Hananiah and John the Baptist who was the last prophet in the OT. Jeremiah and John were the true prophets but Hananiah was not. His prophecy was not a message from God but was his own.

Being a true prophet means putting God’s message above your own life. Almost all the prophets in the OT were killed. John the Baptist was beheaded and tradition states that Jeremiah was stoned to death.

We do not need prophecies about end times because Jesus has revealed everything we need to know about the world and about the Kingdom. He has taught and shown how to live as children of God. We have been taught how to be prepared for judgement day, we just do not need to know when.

Let us focus on living fully our calling to be prophets of love, life and peace. In God’s time, all will be revealed and fulfilled. Amen

Fr. Nivin Scaria 


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