A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. The disciples recounted what had happened on the road to Emmaus and how they had come to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread. This is a continuation of the readings we've been having the last few mornings. Now while they were still speaking about all of this, they're back in Jerusalem. Jesus himself stood in their midst and said to them, peace to you.
In their panic and fright, they thought they they were seeing a ghost. Jesus then said to them, why are you disturbed? Why do such ideas cross your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is really I.
Touch me and see that a ghost does not have flesh and bones such as I have. As he said this, Jesus showed them his hands and his feet. They were still incredulous for sheer joy and wonder. So then Jesus said to them, have you anything to eat? They gave him a piece of cooked fish, which he took, and he ate it in their presence.
Then Jesus said to them, recall those words that I spoke to you when I was still with you. Everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms had to be fulfilled. Then Jesus opened their minds to the understanding of the scriptures. He said to them, thus it is written that the messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. In his name, penance for the remission of sins is to be preached to all the nations beginning at Jerusalem.
You are witnesses to all of this. 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. You will notice can't fail to notice.
In the first reading, first of all, the courage of Peter. Peter is now a transformed man. Remember, this is the same guy who denied that he even knew Jesus just because a maid servant asked him. Now, here's the very same man shortly afterward, just a matter of days afterwards, standing up publicly, not only admitting, freely admitting that he was a follower of Jesus Christ, but straightforwardly accusing the Jews of having executed him. Straight to their faces.
Then he's arguing with them, and his argument is based upon the Old Testament. Now you can call it prophecy or whatever you want, but the old testament is filled with references to the messiah, and every Jew knew thee that. See, we don't. But when Peter was appealing to his to the public out there in front of him, he was on solid ground. See, today we can't even quote a reference to Homer, or to the Iliad, or to the Odyssey, or to Virgil.
People are we've lost contact with that. And we've lost contact with the old testament in the sense of it being a a foretelling, a picture of the future messiah. We don't have that. I mean, currently on our fingertips. But the Jews of Peter's time did have it.
And keep this in mind that at the time our lord came, there was a definite expectation that the time was ripe for the messiah. Now how that's arrived, that's another question. But this is a fact. Our blessed lord wasn't the only one claiming to be a messiah at this particular time. There had been others.
So Peter is appealing to his public on the basis of their own accepted accepted truth about the messiah. He wasn't arguing to that. He was arguing from the old testament. And the point is that while the old testament has hundreds, depending on a lot of things, of these references to the messiah, there are definitely two separate categories of this messiah. And the same man speaks in almost double tongue.
For in one one minute, they're talking about the messiah as the conqueror, the all triumphant, the the brilliant, the exalted. And then the very same author will be telling us about I am a worm and no man. Now, again, I can't tell you why, but at the time of our lord, the conception of the messiah had totally, totally forgotten the suffering messiah, the messiah who would be who would refer to himself as a worm and no man. All they were thinking of was the triumphant messiah, the messiah who would restore the kingdom of Israel. I mean, the physical kingdom, the royal house who would throw out the invaders what Israel would once more rise up as the nation, the chosen people of God be their own autonomous selves.
That's what they had in mind. A man who would lead their people against the invaders and throw them into the sea. Apparently, this other aspect of the must, which is just as clear in Isaiah and the Psalms, just as clear, that had been totally forgotten. And our the disciples of our blessed lord, what was their conception of the messiah? The triumphant messiah.
Triumphant in the physical, worldly, temporal, regal, political sense. It was our blessed lord on the way to Emmaus who tried to bring home to them understanding of the prophecy that the son of god had to suffer to fulfill. And Peter takes the same line. He said, you have forgotten. You I know you did it out of ignorance, but all of it all of these all of these prophecies which we know so well, and they did know them.
He wasn't talking to a bunch of people who were ignorant of the old testament. They knew these things, and they were expecting the messiah with their whole hearts and souls. And said, I know you did this out of ignorance, but now you've got to straighten up and fly rightly. Now today, the argument from prophecy, it isn't very appealing, and it isn't greatly appealing to me either, I'll tell you, for a lot of reasons. One of them being that is an understanding of the prophecy itself because they're in Hebrew, and there in many instances, there's a lot of discussion and argumentation about what the meaning is, and, oh, it goes on and on.
But we have to look at history in the light of its times, of the people, and their environment, and their own contemporary reaction to their own culture of their own day. Now I say this to bring home what that the the whole point of the church today in giving this these readings just as before the resurrection is to bring home to us the divinity of Jesus Christ. See, we can forget this. Christ can be lost in the wash. God can be forgotten in worshiping him.
I mean by that, we can go we can get so immersed in the things that are supposed to help us to worship god, in the things which are supposed to lead us to Jesus Christ. We can become so immersed in them that we forget god and we forget his son, Jesus Christ. The church doesn't want that to happen to us. The church wants us to keep in mind what this is all about. That man sinned, man still sins, man still needs a savior, and we have a savior.
Fact. Fact. It happened. It's an historical thing that took place. That's what the church wants to bring home to us and to make it vibrant in our lives.
That it be not just something we shoot off like a like a theorem in geometry or like some metaphysical principle or logical principle, the syllogism or something. Nobody laid down their lives for a syllogism. Even Socrates didn't do that. He laid it down for a principle. Yet down the centuries, men and women, children, and the aged have laid down their lives for Jesus Christ and for God in the old testament.
That's the kind of faith we need. That's the kind of faith many of a believer has been called upon to exercise. The fact that we're not called upon to exercise it is not an invitation to have less faith. It's an invitation to have greater faith in the light of the company we keep. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit.
Amen.