The daily lectionary has just turned to Jeremiah, a young man from a village outside Jerusalem who resisted God's call and accepted it anyway. He preached through the last five kings of the Southern Kingdom, lived through the fall of Jerusalem in 586, and by tradition was stoned to death in Egypt because people did not like what he was saying.
Fr. Wilson explains what a prophet actually is: one who speaks God's word in a particular time and calls God's people back to the covenant. The warning is not that God is petty and waiting to punish us. It is that God respects our freedom enough to let us live out the consequences of our choices, and sin never ends well for us.

The Church carries that same prophetic role today. One recent example is the Holy Father's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which is really less about artificial intelligence than about what it means to stay human in a world becoming rapidly dehumanized. Fr. Wilson says that reading it, he heard a prophetic voice, and that if we do not listen he expects a day will come when we look back and wish we had.

Readings (Thursday, 16th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II):
• Jeremiah 2:1-3, 7-8, 12-13
• Psalm 36
• Matthew 13:10-17