A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee. Of course, you know, when you leave Jerusalem or any capital of the city, you go down. Because as a matter of fact, Capernaum, as you know, is up in north country on the Northwest Corner of the Lake Of Galilee. So Jesus left Jerusalem and went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee, where he began teaching the people on the Sabbath day.
He went into the synagogue. They were spellbound by our lord's teaching. Why? Because his words had authority. In the synagogue where he was in Capernaum, the ruins are still there.
They're still excavating them. In the synagogue, there was a man with an unclean spirit who shrieked in a loud voice, leave us alone. What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of god.
Jesus said to the unclean spirit, sharply, be quiet. Come out of that man. At that, the demon threw the man to the ground before everybody's eyes and came out of the man without doing him any harm. Everybody was astonished, and everybody began saying to one another, what is there about this man's speech? He commands even the unclean spirits with authority and with power, and they leave.
The renown of Jesus kept spreading through the surrounding country, and this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. There was no lack of teachers among the Jewish people. They were a class by themselves and a very elite class. Scribes, pharisees, the lawyers, these were men of great education, men of social prestige, religious prestige, and even political prestige.
And so they carried enormous weight. And when they spoke, people listened and with every right, with every right. These were the leaders of the people, of the Jewish people, and they were the inter you might say the level, the middle level between the Jewish people and the Romans who were running the show. Now you can't miss the the main message here. Of course, you may be interested in the demons, and I just leave that.
I don't know anything about that. But notice that's that's recounted here as a fact. Just just remember that. This that there are demons in this world. I mean, at least the New Testament certainly does, give you plenty of evidence for that, of demons and unclean spirits and men and women being possessed of unclean spirits.
You can't escape that as a fact of the New Testament. So but I rest the case there. I'm no I'm no authority on unclean spirits and demons. I leave that to the exorcist. Of course, everybody has been educated by the exorcist.
What I want to simply emphasize, to underscore, to put italics in italics, is is the reaction of the people. The reaction of the people to our lord's words. And to me, that's excellent evidence. That's excellent evidence. And the main thing notice, it isn't what Christ said that appealed so much to them, it's that he spoke with authority.
He didn't call a committee. He didn't compromise. He didn't negotiate. He didn't use a democratic process. He didn't go around counseling people.
He didn't go around seeking their views. He spoke with authority. That is the point that's emphasized. Now in our lord's time, authority was no problem. You just think of that wonderful, wonderful incident incident, not a parable, incident of our lord's life with the centurion, with the with the Roman soldier.
When Christ said, I'll come and heal your son. And the Roman soldier, the Roman soldier said, don't don't bother coming. I know what it is to be a man of authority. I'm a man of authority. And when I tell my underling to do something, he does it.
When I say come, he comes. And when I say get out of here, he gets out. So don't bother yourself coming. I know what authority is. Authority was a was a well known concept in our lord's time.
It's also a very well known concept today, chiefly to be rejected. To be rejected. We don't like authority. We just don't like it in our world. And there's a lot of that in the Catholic church today where even the authority of the pope is being rejected by so called Catholics.
Now if there was a person who lived if you see, one of the worst things can happen to you is to have a sense of logic Because the church of Jesus Christ wasn't founded by Aristotle. But believe me, there's one thing you can say about the church of Jesus Christ, it is consistent. It is logical. And remember, when people throw out the Catholic church, nine times out of 10, they throw Aristotle out too. That's not an accident at all.
When Luther condemned the pope to hell, he put Aristotle down there with the pope. I'll find out how true he was a little later. I'll let you know about it. But the thing about the Catholic church is this, did Christ live or didn't he? Did he found a church or didn't he?
Answer, yes or no. If he founded a church, what did he say about it? He said it would endure until the end of time. Did he mean it or didn't he mean it? Was he kidding, or was he a man speaking with authority?
Or was he speaking with authority? Was Christ God? Well, I tell you, when you read some of these latest biblical exegesis, you don't know where you stand. But let me tell you, they aren't the church. I don't care how internationally known, how widely they are acclaimed as great scholars, they are not the Catholic church.
Remember, some of the greatest scholars were at finally declared heretics by Rome. And in many instances, Rome was a very thin minority. Take Arius. A very thin minority, but Rome is still there. And how many in this congregation knows very much about Arius?
With all due regard for your knowledge of church history. I don't know much about him either, but we're here with the church of Jesus Christ. The church of Jesus Christ is either what it says it is, his church, or it isn't. And if it isn't, we ought to get rid of it because it's a it's a sham and a terrible sham. Think how many millions and millions of people have been misled if the church, the Roman church of Jesus Christ, is wrong.
And so I respect people who say, I think that church is wrong and let's get rid of it. I respect them. I can argue with them. Just like I can argue with an atheist, but I can't argue with an agnostic. That's like trying to hold mercury in your hand.
Have you ever tried it? So if there is a a church that Christ said was going to be his living voice, who hears you, hears me. Christ said that. And if if I am not in contact with it in the twentieth century, it's not doing me a bit of good. And if you say all I need is the bible, I will tell you now that is hopeless.
If you if you go because you're going to say, what does it mean? Because you can't read a translation. That's what some man or a woman says it means. You've got to go back to the original. Then you're you're no better off.
You're no better off if you try to understand it in the light of this contemporary, historical critical method. You don't know where you stand, what happened or what didn't happen. It's all confusion. And if that's the best we have to plight our lives and our destiny, we are in desperate shape. We have come to the logical conclusion of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin's idea of individual personal interpretation of the bible and saying the bible is our sole rule of faith.
Remember, the Catholic church never never said that. There was a church before you had the bible. That is the New Testament. There may be as much as a hundred years between the two. The bible wasn't written to convert people.
The bible the New Testament was written by the evangelists, by the authors of the letters or the epistles, to people who were already following Jesus Christ. It wasn't a book of apologetics. If if the church speaks and claims to be Christ's voice speaking, it has to speak with his truth. You can't escape the logic of that. The only way you can escape it is to go back step by step and deny each one until you come to deny Jesus Christ as the son of god, and that is being done.
So the living voice, the contemporary voice of Christ speaking to us is threefold, threefold. The first is tradition. There that existed before anything was written down. As I say, there was a church before you had a book. Then you have the bible, of course, the New Testament and the Old Testament as the inspired word of God.
Why do you know that? Not because of the book, but because of the church of Jesus Christ. And thirdly, you have the the what we call the magisterium. That is the teaching power of the living voice of Christ church. And that is the pope speaking by himself ex cathedra or speaking in union with the bishops of the world, the universal truth of Christ's church.
It can't go wrong if it's Christ's church and if Christ is god. You see how all those ifs come in? You either accept it or you don't. And when you look around in the world today, where do you find your anchor hope? Where?
Where? You're sitting in Garrett Park in 1983 almost at the beginning of September, and here we are. We are going back right to Jesus Christ. And how often from this pulpit we have names coming up, Monica, Augustine, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Saint Aurenaeus of Leon. We this is the company we keep.
A Newman at the end of the nineteenth century. A Saint Thomas of Bonaventure in the thirteenth century. You see, time evaporates. Time disappears. We reach out right to the wellspring of the living god, the living god, in the person of his son, Jesus Christ, speaking in the living voice of his living church.
In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.