Transcript
2. Understanding Prophetic Dialogue as an SVD
How do you understand dialogue?
Who are the prophet? Let’s go back to the Old Testament.
What do the prophets do? They are basically God’s messengers.
What message do they send to the people? We talk about God’s truths, diba? Ang mga kamatuoran sa Ginoo.
Okay? So the same thing applies here so when you talk about prophets in prophetic dialogue. Prophets are
people of truth, but not just any kind of truths, its divine truth that come from God. It’s the message from
God.
So when we talk about the message of the Lord, what are these? Justice, diba, about peace, kalinaw, about
love, gugma, about compassion. So these are the messages coming from the Lord , so when we talk about
prophets these are the truths that they are talking about: compassion, mercy, forgiveness those prophets that
you have mentioned they come with their own messages depending on the context, depending on the call of
the time, right? So because of these prophets because these prophets were talking about God’s divine truths,
in most cases they are persecuted and society would go against them because many elements of society
would not want to hear the truths about forgiveness, about peace, about understanding, about unity and even
at this time in our society people would talk about these things, people, that you would always encounter
enemies, prophet would always encounter enemies, okay, without reconciliation, so when you talk about
prophetic dialogue basically it’s a kind of our calling as a Christians to be prophets of the day and to engage in
a dialogue because you know when the message is about communication, convey the message, to pass and
convey you have to engage in a conversation in a dialogue, okay, so dialogue is an exchange, right? An
exchange of conversation messages and you know that there are people who are looking for ways to be
guided, ways to be enlightened, right? Ways to find consolation and comfort or assurance and you dialogue
with them. So for example, in your case, you go out there and you encounter like people in the streets and
there are different sorts of people, some looking for jobs, or friend, some are looking for homes to stay, some
are basically wandering around not knowing what they are looking for so people searching and you have
dialogue with them and you have your message with you, the message of God’s truth. Again, depending on
the context. And if you find someone who is homeless then what kind of message this people are will be kind
of getting from you so depending on what you can offer to them so some for children when you encounter
children, orphans some of them are not schooled, they are not able to go to school maybe because perhaps
they are not able to support themselves their parents are unable to pay their tuition fee now. Also hungry
children what kind of conversation you will have with them so prophetic dialogue you just maybe hang out
with them, ask them about their situations in life. Maybe give them some amount of money you have that you
can give them. That’s prophetic dialogue. Prophetic dialogue today is a conversation about climate change
about the environment. So as a prophet what do you stand for, maybe you talk about justice, how would you
contextualize justice in relation to environmental issues. So you talk about planting trees, because planting
trees does not only talk about your current situation or you current need but also talking about your future,
justice for the future generation that they will find the world still livable? And would still able to supply their
needs. So you talk about that one, that’s injustice. And compassion, even because when you plant trees, you
planting something that will maybe benefit somebody else. That is compassion the same way that you are
enjoying the fruits of the labor of last generation that those people are planting the tree now and without your
effort more you’re grieving the fruits of their hard work. So that’s compassion also on their part so all these
things can be compared to that, can be contextualized. Reconciliation, you have friends that quarrel, in
prophetic dialogue your role is to complain and see to it that people will come to terms with each other and
reconcile. So there are many ways even in the classroom how do you process prophetic dialogue someone is
feeling depressed and lonely maybe even not having an idea how to prepare for an exam, so that’s where you
come in a prophets for today.
