Ezekiel cooked his food over cow poop to symbolize the defiled food the Israelites would eat in exile (Ezekiel 4:12-15).
John the Baptist ate locusts.
And as a way to show how Israel failed to cling to Him, God told Jeremiah to buy some underwear, wear it, then hide it in some rocks, only to retrieve it later and find it ruined (Jer. 13:1-11).
The prophets are bizarre. So much so that they can be a little intimidating or even outright confusing. In our Baptism we are anointed priest, PROPHET, and king, but are we really supposed to do wild and unbelievable things? Is that what being a prophet means?
The word prophet comes from the Greek pro-phetes which means “to speak on behalf of someone” and biblically this is taken up to mean “speaking in the name of God”.
What makes Ezekiel, John the Baptist, and Jeremiah prophets then isn’t the extraordinary things they did, but the fact that they spoke in the name of God. In fact, their bizarre actions were only valuable BECAUSE they were speaking in the name of God.
When the Church says that we participate in the prophetic mission, it simply means that we have the responsibility of speaking on behalf of God by proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed and denouncing evil. And John Paul II tells us that this happens in every part of life, not just the extreme extraordinary moments.
The couple struggling to get pregnant who patiently refuse a doctor’s suggestion to do IVF, a Catholic teacher that upholds Church Teaching even if it ruffles feathers, a family who chooses to live frugally despite the consumerist mindset of the modern age—all of this is the prophetic mission.
It may not appear extraordinary, but it is the Gospel being lived with love in a way that contradicts the present age… and that is always extraordinary.