A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Some of the scribes and the pharisees then spoke up saying to Jesus, teacher, we want to see you work some signs. Our lord replied, an evil and unfaithful age is eager for a sign. No sign will be given it but the sign of the prophet Jonah. Just as Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the son of man spend three days and three nights in the bowels of the earth.
At the judgment, the citizens of Nineveh will rise with the present generation and be the ones to condemn it. At the preaching of Jonah, they reformed their lives, but you have a greater than Jonah here. At the judgment, the queen of the South will rise with the present generation and be the one to condemn it. She came from the father's corner of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, but you have a greater than Solomon here. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord.
The name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen. Last week, we had the feast of our lady of Mount Carmel, which we did not take proceedings over the mass of the day. However, just by a coincidence, I glad I read or glanced at the operatory prayer of the common of our blessed lady. And that operatory prayer went something like this. May the humanity of Jesus strengthen and encourage our weakness.
May the humanity of Jesus encourage and strengthen our weakness. That has stuck in my mind. And to me, it has a tremendous message which today, when we're labeling in really a twentieth century gnostic gnosticism, we are overlooking tremendously a most illuminating truth of our religion. We talk about Jesus as being the son of Mary. We often say that.
It's all it's tied in very often in the liturgy. Son of Mary. What what do you think there's what what is the church telling you when it says son of Mary? It is saying Jesus Christ, the son of god, is truly man, is truly a human being, 100% human. And that keeps recurring time and again.
But that's what the church is putting in very concrete language. If there's one thing that I take my hat off to to Luther for and to the and to to some of the reformationists, was it was this very fact that they tried to bring back to the Christian consciousness that Jesus Christ was truly man. Luther has some powerful sermons on this, especially around Christmas time. We forget it. We we isolate Christ.
We put him away from ourselves when he did everything to make himself one of us, one of us. And in a literal sense, not in any gnostic sense, but in an absolutely literal sense, Christ literally was born of the virgin Mary, literally, and literally rose from the dead. That's the doctrine of the Catholic church. I don't have to wait for some kind of experiential encounter with Jesus to know that. But sometimes we are asking for a sign.
What sign do we want? All the sign we see may be a man hanging on the cross. And that, you see, we've glamorized that so much that we have glamorized it out of reality. You can accepting sin, you can think of any weakness that human nature is actually a subject to, and our blessed lord was there was there. I think one of the most puzzling, frustrating, confusing issues that we have to face day not a day in and day out, but often enough to make it a most serious problem, is this conflict between what Christ said and what doesn't seem to happen.
He says pray and you'll get what you're praying for. We pray and we don't get it. Yesterday, we had this wonderful theme of the good shepherd. What that means to an Eskimo, I don't know. What the idea of a shepherd means to people today in in the East around here, I don't know.
Most of them never seen an honest to god shepherd, much less a shepherd over in in the holy Land in Israel. But the thing is, we glamorize this. And here we have this beautiful psalm, I am the good sheep, and this has brought comfort to countless thousands down the centuries. But on the other hand, it has brought nothing but frustration to countless thousands down the centuries. When with the best intentions, with the best the best dedication I mean, actual fact, in daily living, there doesn't seem to be any appearance of the good shepherd in some people's lives sometimes.
I I I keep coming back to the book of Job. I hope to goodness you read it once in a while. Because nothing nothing in the world, I mean the entire world, has been written on this subject to match the book of Job. Now we say when we are most utterly frustrated, when we say we cry out, my god, why is this happening? Are you out of your cotton picking mind?
Are you insane? Are you crazy? Is there a god that can allow such things to happen? This is normal. This is the way it is, and this is the way it was with Jesus Christ.
Never forget it. Never forget it. Did he beg God to be freed of what he had to suffer? He surely did. When did you sweat blood because you had to face up to something terrifically hard, difficult, impossible?
When did you last sweat blood because of what you had to undergo? Jesus did. Our lord did. When did you feel abandoned and lost and forlorn and faint and stark? When?
Plenty of times. Did Jesus what happened to him on the cross? This is the son of god talking. My god. My god.
Why have you abandoned me? Now when were you there last hanging from the cross and felt absolutely deserted by god? Where was the good shepherd then? Where was the answer to your prayers then? Where was the answer to Christ's prayer on the cross?
See, what I this is what I'm saying is absolutely commonplace. It's it's the it's the wolf of our very of our our deepest, profoundest religious belief that Christ was man. And he proved it. He was hungry. He had on one occasion, we're told he was angry.
He was tired. He got away from people. He couldn't keep stand them anymore. He wept. He had he had profound and loving friendships.
Those nearest and dearest to him deserted him, abandoned him, proved themselves absolutely guilty of the utmost treason. That you, my friends, those who are nearest and dearest to me, have betrayed me. You name it. What did Christ miss in the terms of human suffering in his life, accepting the weakness of sin? Where?
What did he miss? And the answer is nothing. And not only did he face up to this with but he faced up to it as we didn't face up to it. There's scarcely a day goes by that something doesn't happen in our own lives or that we read about or that we see happening around us, that we say, my god, why is this happening? You're supposed to be all good and all loving, all knowledgeable, all just.
How can you have a world that we say is your world and this is happening? Tolstoy wrote this. He wrote his most famous novel, War and Peace, on this very subject. Partly on this subject anyway, but it's very much involved in it. And so we come back.
I think that prayer is terrific. We pray that the humanity of Jesus Christ will encourage and strengthen us in our weakness, in our weakness. Because when we sit back, when we survey the world, when all of these crazy things are happening, when nothing seems to make much sense, sense. Remember, we are making all of those judgments from our perspective. It's the only way we can make them.
And here I am sitting back contemplating the world, and I am making these judgments about what makes sense, what makes nonsense, what is absurd, what is good, what is evil. I'm making all of these judgments. Who in the world am I to do it? Especially, if back of my head, I have a certain amount of conviction that there is a God running the show. But who am I to put myself up then against what I see happening and say, oh, I understand this all, and it's all lot of nonsense.
Absurdities. Craziness. Who am I to do it? And yet, this is the way we act. So we come back.
I think that's a gorgeous it's the operatory prayer that we pray to god's humanity. God's humanity. Because the person of Jesus Christ is divine. It isn't my faith that makes him divine. Let's get away from this twentieth century gnosticism of which there's a lot of it around.
We are talking literal fact. Christ was born in history, not in someone's wishful thinking. My encounter with Christ is not the proof of the resurrection, which would which would negate or denigrate the the literal truth of the resurrection. We believe that Christ was literally born of a virgin, that he literally died, that he literally rose from the dead, and that the person of Jesus Christ was truly divine, but most absolutely and totally human. Nothing except sin belonging to human nature was absent in Jesus Christ.
He knew full well what we are. Let us know full well what we are. And that prayer, thinking of Jesus, may the humanity of Jesus strengthen, encourage our weakness because in that, we will be strong. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.