Today’s readings: Deuteronomy 18,15-20; 1 Corinthians 7,32-35; Mark 1,21-28.

Prophets were always needed and are still needed. They provoke, they shake the foundations, they voice what many would feel but lack the courage to express. Churches would fossilise and die out without them. At the same time, they are threatening, and that is why very often they are persecuted and silenced.

This is what Deuteronomy and Mark’s gospel precisely highlight for us today. Unless we give heed to the prophets God raises in the ruts we settle in, everything will simply degenerate into a routine that has no authority on our everyday living. This is how many people today experience religion, and this explains why religion is sidelined in the lives of many.

As everything else in life, there are teachings and teachings. There are teachings that smell of dogmatism, that sound too certain to be grasped and simply put people off. Teachings that are merely doctrine, that are formulated in a language that does not speak to us today. But there are teachings that speak truth and touch the heart. These are teachings that carry authority.

This is a major problem in the Church’s communication of its message to emerging generations. We tend to fossilise doctrine and pretend to pass it on dressed in the same language and concepts as it was formulated centuries ago. This was also a major problem at the time of Jesus when people were also bored and not the least touched by the teachings that had been handed down from distant generations.

Jesus made a difference. He spoke a different language, more comprehensible and that struck a cord for whoever listened. The unclean spirit shouting at Jesus in the synagogue stands for our resistance to this voice inside, all our blockages in the life of faith that make it harder and harder to believe. The life of faith is profoundly personal, and unless we explore deep down in the depths of who we are, it would remain difficult to acknowledge the authority of Jesus in our lives. Jesus touches us at our most intimate and he enters our world at the core of our existence.

In Jesus, God raised a prophet, a new voice, even a dissident voice meant to bring things back into perspective. There was tension between the synagogue, which stands for the tradition received, and the authority with which Jesus spoke, leaving on the people “a deep impression”.

Jesus puts the individual at the centre, and his teachings are not mere words or doctrine. Jesus heals, restores health, confronts the interior self. He does not simply burden people with the demands of the law without attending to the interior needs. That is, after all, what the life of faith is about balancing interior care with exterior demands. When in religion we attend merely to the latter, then we lose connection with our true self, our own space is invaded and God becomes merely the judge. That is an utter distortion of faith.

From such an early stage, the words of Deuteronomy recall this basic need of churches throughout the ages. The Church as an institution of religion has always had its own ministers with their respective authority which, though, many a time transforms itself into power. Yet the Church lived on thanks to the tension which the voice of so many prophets brought about, many times even contrasting the authority of the institution itself.

The voice of the prophets is always threatening. “Have you come to destroy us?” Jesus was asked. For many people in our times, Pope Francis speaks with authority not just because he happens to be the Pope, but for the way he speaks, the language he uses, and the freedom with which he even contrasts or challenges the routine tradition that we take for granted but which for many represents only a dead faith of the past.

Prophets always serve to refresh the sources of our spiritual energy, they help us to remain focussed. With them, like with Jesus, what yesterday was heresy becomes a truth today. They echo in the depths of our existence and identity the voice of God. Without them, religion is impoverished and the Church is spiritless.