A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. As Jesus was casting out a devil, notice, some of the crowd said it is by Beelzebub, the prince of devils, that he casts out devils. Others, to test Jesus, were asking of him a sign from heaven. I noticed this was in the course in the procedure of throwing the devil out. Now because Jesus knew their thoughts, he said to them, every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste.
Any house torn by dissension falls. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? Since you say it is by Beelzebub that I cast out devils. If I cast out devils by Beelzebub, by whom do your people cast them out? In such a case, let them act as your judges.
But if it is by the finger of god that I cast out devils, then the reign of god is upon you. Now you'll get the logic of that. It's absolutely didactic. Then our blessed lord continues. When a strong man fully armed guards his courtyard, his possessions go undisturbed.
But when someone stronger than he comes and overpowers him, such a one carries off the arms on which he was relying and divides the spoil. The man who is not with me is against me, and the man who does not gather with me scatters. When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it wanders through arid wastes searching for a resting place. Failing to find one, it says, I will go back where I came from. It then returns to find the house swept and tidied.
Next, it goes out and returns with seven other spirits far worse than itself who enter in and dwell in that man. The result is that the last state of that man is worse than the first, and this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord, Jesus Christ. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
This is not the only occasion when our blessed lord slams his opponents with a good dose of logic. See, he left he they're on a dilemma. He this the the structure, the logical structure of our Lord's argument here is is a dilemma. He and and a dilemma means that they have a choice among a number of consequences, and any choice they take proves against them. So you see what the upshot of this argument, that's what this is, that our blessed lord throws at his appointments is this, if you say I cast out devils by by Beelzebub and your people cast them out, well, then by what authority did they do it, and by what authority do I do it?
Now if you tell me I'm doing it by the devil, then how did your forefathers do it? Now notice all this all this fury over devils and spirits being inhabiting whole human beings. Just keep that in the back of your head. You know, it it that is not just a fiction, this matter of possession. But that's not the point I want to make.
What I the I wanna ask a question. Today, as so often happens, when very strong arguments, in a sense they were strong, were were thrown at our blessed lord, and he answered them with the utmost conclusiveness in one way or another, and we don't know how it works out. See, we're not told here at all how what was the reaction of of these, critics of our lord when he threw this thing at them? You be the judges. We don't know what they judged.
This is not the only instance of this kind of thing. How personally, I would love to know what happened next. Are we to conclude that they just kept silent, saying nothing? Because, you see, anything they say, any choice any any decision they make about the choices our lord gives them proves against So about the only thing they could do is to either either leave the scene of the argument, keep quiet, or if you're a good debater, you'll tar start hollering about the weather, or you'll start asking what's wrong with that little boy in the crowd. He's got a nosebleed, you know, something which is so opposite to the issue.
We we don't know what they did. Did they try to answer our Lord? Did they try to wiggle out of it? Were they impressed by the logic of his remarks? Did they change their attitude?
What happened? What happens to us? What happens to us when so often, more or less often, let's not exaggerate, we hear the voice of god, and we have choices. What do we do? What do we do?
You know, Newman says more than once, well, says it at least once, that no man was ever converted by a syllogism. And he's absolutely right. He's absolutely right. What what brings people to change, as we say, to convert, can be a lot of things. And and it's not a syllogism.
Newman should have done what he did years before, and he is he he admits this, but he couldn't see his way to doing it. He saw the logic of it. He saw the direction that that his principles should lead him, but he couldn't make the move for various reasons. Newman wrote a whole book on this question called The Grammar of Ascent, to keep anybody with any sense from reading the book with a title like that. But it's one of the finest things that was ever written in English on this subject.
What causes us to change? Some people say very few people ever change, and I think I belong to that group. But but people do change. Look at look what happened to Paul. Now in many instances, these changes aren't as abrupt as they seem.
Look what happened to an Augustine up in Milan. Oh, you could give many instances. But it wasn't a syllogism that did it. It wasn't the force of logic that did it. Remember, it was Newman who said that it is almost a definition of man, and this includes women, to say that they are irrational animals.
See, that's Aristotle said that definition of a man is a rational animal, and Newman says it's almost a definition of human beings to say they are irrational animals. So much for your logic and your syllogisms. Then you see, what does count? Well, now we're really in deep water because in other words, what is the makeup of a human being? What brings us to to put our life and our honor on the line?
Not a syllogism, not a logical argument, not an apodictic conclusion of an argument that we cannot puncture at all. None of those things. So what is it? Well, Augustine wrote his confessions. You have a lot there on this subject, and that was in the fourth century AD and the fifth century.
He wrote it in the fifth century, the beginning of it, you know. But this is worth thinking about. What happened to these men and women who who came to Christ with all these questions and he answered a lot of them? He gave them good answers, but we don't know what they did about it, if anything. And if we judge the past, at least if I judge the past from what I know of the present, I would say, you know what I think about it?
They hated Christ all the more. That's what I think. See, they weren't pursuers of truth. They were out to catch Jesus, to con to refute him, to confute him, to disprove him, to discredit him. They weren't seeking truth.
So anything that he did on the line of bringing the truth to them in the if they thought they had to accept it, they resented it and hated him all the more. Well, this is the story of human beings, and it can be the story our story, but it needn't be. It needn't be. More than once, our blessed lord has said we have to be like little children. Now I'm not a great champion of children, but I know what our blessed lord meant when he used that metaphor or his simile.
I know what he meant, and we've got to have that. We can't go to Christ as a disembodied spirit or mind. We go to him as our individual selves with all that we are. And remember what Thomas says, I believe. Lord, help thou my unbelief.
That's where we are. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.