All of life is a sacred adventure in the coming of the Reign of God, a journey to fullness of life rather than its denunciation. Yet many still follow the privatization of the spiritual life that blossomed in the nineteenth century. They still cling to the notion that the purpose of the spiritual life is to enable people to flee the sullying secularism of the world for the sake of personal sanctification. It is a spirituality that “practices” religion but does not identify with the Gospel messages that embody it.

If there is anything about the prophetic dimension of life that is clear, it is surely this: more people decline to accept the appointment than embrace it. As much as the church across time has recognized the role of prophets as charismatic carriers of the word of God for humankind, as much as prophetic religious groups have left behind them models and ministries enough to rebuild the world from century to century, an old heresy remains. The struggle to escape the world—to avoid conflict and let things take care of themselves—stays strong in us.

We have lost the holy gift of awareness of the world’s needs that the prophets brought to fullness. We have overlooked what the prophets knew best: the time most germane to our own sanctification is now. What we do and say, see and respond to, in our own day is the real seed of our own sanctification. It is the times we live in that are our call to courage.

No doubt about it: The purpose of prophecy is to leaven the world, to bring it closer to the Reign of God one small step at a time. The quality of life we create around us as followers of Jesus is meant to seed new life, new hope, new dynamism, the very essence of a new world community.

No exception is made for anyone. None of us, however isolated from the rest of life, is forgiven the responsibility. But how can it possibly be done by busy people with family and professional lives to live? The truth is that it’s actually not difficult.

To be spiritually mature, we must each be about something greater than ourselves. Every local area is being affected by great global movements. … To own the implications of prophetic spirituality in the Christian life, we must think beyond our own small world to the effects other issues are having on the local area and make a response to them—with others or alone.

It has been said that every community at least one prophet. The poet Mary Oliver may have written the best definition of what it means to be a prophet in contemporary spirituality. She writes, “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”