Prophets for Today

Believing that the Indian Christian Church needs to be incarnated in the Indian soil to establish the Reign of God that brings peace, justice, unity and fellowship, here the author studies the prophetic role of women religious in India. Basing particularly on the Congregation Sisters of St. Anne of Tiruchirapalli (SAT), India, it focuses on prophetic nature of religious life. Jesus was a prophet, living in a context which was politically colonized, socially patriarchal, economically oppressive and religiously fundamentalist. As he went around,interacting with people, Jesus perceived very clearly the oppressive structures present in the society. It was his interaction with the ordinary people and his experience with them that moved his heart to take a clear stand for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed, specially the women. Jesus articulated all these concrete experiences from his deep contemplative experience of God, whom he experienced as “Abba”- Father/Mother(George Soares-Prabhu). It was the integration of these two inseparable experiences – of God and of the poor – which shaped Jesus'' vision for a new society. Jesus the prophet is the model for women religious.