Someone once asked Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife in Brazil, “Is it hard being a prophet and being a prophet in one’s own country?” Dom Helder replied that the word “prophet” is used in too narrow a sense, as though “the Lord only charged a small number of people with the responsibility of being one. Whereas we all as members of the Church have a prophetic mission.” It’s true isn’t it?

Every person baptized in the baptismal ceremony is anointed a prophet, as was Christ. Each of us is anointed, as Dom Helder puts it, “to lend the Lord’s voice to those who have no voice, to do exactly what Christ, when reading from Isaiah, declared his own personal mission to be, `the Lord God has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to open their eyes and set them free.’ This,” he said, “has always been the Church’s mission.”