If you’ve been a regular at Mass over these summer months you will have listened to the guidance of the prophets in our readings.

Whether you've heard God’s wisdom and warnings through Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Micah or Hosea, it’s that time of year when we are given the revelatory word that brings about change in the hearts of some or consolation in the hearts of others.

But, as our General Secretary Canon Chris Thomas tells us, prophets are often misunderstood.

“Lots of people think that prophets are there to predict the future when really that's not fully their role,” he tells us on our At the Foot of the Cross podcast. "Prophets, as we understand them, are people who are endowed with a supernatural gift of wisdom to be claimed in the hearts of the people. They challenge current day practices and make known to the people the consequences of not changing their ways.”

Canon Thomas uses three vocational stories about prophets and their preaching, focusing on Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah.

As we go through the Summer, we'll hear the prophets time and time again. Listening to their words can, at times, be quite difficult, but Canon Thomas offers some advice.

“If you keep in the back of your mind that prophets are given a specific word by God to preach to the people so that they will return to being faithful to the covenant and adapt their way of living,” he says. “They can then, as the Prophet Micah says, act justly, love mercifully or tenderly, and more humbly with God. This then leads them to the fullness of life.”

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