You never find the prophet exalted in his own times. If you do speak what is true and do what is right in your life, in your family, in your neighborhood, in your office, you will suffer.

Carving wood is difficult. Let’s say you are carving a sign, carving some letters into a piece of wood. Let’s say it’s black walnut—a very nice wood. If the carver wants a legible sign, or anything for that matter, there is one golden rule he must follow: go against the grain. The sinews of wood have a pattern to them. To make a good cut, you have to know the grain of wood, how to work with it and against it. The Scriptures have a number of letter-carvers in its pages, namely the prophets. The prophet goes against the grain.

The prophet goes against the grain in how he speaks. How does he know what to say? If the carver intends to make a good sign, he has to have what he wants to write firmly in mind. The prophet knows what to say because he speaks God’s words. This was the promise made to Moses, the greatest of prophets: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kindred, and will put my words into the mouth of the prophet; the prophet shall tell them all that I command” (Deut 18:18). With God’s words in his mouth, the prophet becomes like the God who has sought him, namely he becomes relentless, even crazy, a “voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’” (Isa 40:3; Matt 3:3). He must cry out, he is almost physically moved: “it is as if fire is burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding back, I cannot!” (Jer 20:9).

The prophet goes against the grain in how he acts. He doesn’t just “talk the talk,” but “walks the walk.” The carver may have his words set, the letters traced in pencil, but if he never picks up his tools, he won’t produce anything. The prophet likewise. The prophet puts God’s words in actions in radical ways. Abraham, the first to be called a prophet, was called to leave his homeland: “The Lord said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you” (Gen 12:1-2). Some prophets’ tasks seem strange in any day. Isaiah had to walk around Jerusalem naked for three years; Jeremiah had to buy a loin cloth and bury it in the ground a thousand miles away; Ezekiel was told by God to burrow through the wall of the city. Hosea married a harlot: “When the Lord began to speak with Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea: Go, get for yourself a woman of prostitution and children of prostitution, for the land prostitutes itself, turning away from the Lord” (Hos 1:2). Actions speak louder than words. God is present in history, and he has the power to lead his people not only by words but by actions. The prophet must sometimes do crazy things in the eyes of others, but he does it for them, to show them God’s plans, to reflect God’s will.

So what does it all matter to you? Look at the prophet’s fate: In all the prophet speaks, in all the prophet does, in all his words and actions, he suffers. You never find the prophet exalted in his own times (see Matt 23:29-30). If you do speak what is true and do what is right in your life, in your family, in your neighborhood, in your office, you will suffer. The wood-carver will look down at his finished product and find the surprise that he has made for himself a cross, with no other words carved in but a plaque of mockery: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Jesus is the greatest of prophets, and thus the greatest of sufferers. To be his disciples and witnesses means joining in his suffering and Cross. Through our baptism we, too, become prophets and are able to share in Christ’s saving mission of love. “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son” (Heb 1:1-2).

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Republished with gracious permission from Dominicana (October 2025). 

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Image: John Singer Sargent, Study for “Frieze of Prophets”