A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zachariah of the priestly class of Adiyah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron named Elizabeth. Both were just in the eyes of god, blamelessly following all the commandments and ordinances of the lord. They were childless, for Elizabeth was sterile.
Moreover, both of them were advanced in years. Hopeless case. Once, when it was the turn of Zacharias' class, and he was fulfilling his functions as a priest before God, it fell to him by lot, according to priestly usage, to enter the sanctuary of the lord and to offer incense. While the full assembly of people was praying outside at the incense hour, an angel of the lord appeared to Zechariah, standing at the right of the altar of incense. Zechariah was startled and deeply disturbed upon seeing him and overcome by fear.
You see how human this is, very human. The angel said to Zachariah, do not be frightened. Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth, shall bear a son whom you shall name John. Very extraordinary.
He should have his father's name. Joy and gladness will be yours, and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great in the eyes of the lord. He will never drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the holy spirit from his mother's womb. Many of the sons of Israel will he bring back to the lord their god. God himself will go before him in the spirit and the power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the rebellious to the wisdom of the just and to prepare for the lord, a people well disposed.
At all of this, Zechariah said to the angel, how am I to know this? The great epistemological problem of knowledge. Knowledge. And here, good old Zechariah says, this is all great stuff you know, but how am I to know this? That's as absolutely a solid question.
Know this, he wasn't a credulous man at all. He knew this all could be a lot of illusion. So he says, how am I going to know this, that you're talking sense? I'm not just having a bitter spell of indigestion, as we would say today, you know. I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years, He could have added you sterile.
The angel replied, now look, this is a question of knowledge, of certitude. This couldn't be better than any court of law. The angel replied, I am Gabriel, who stand in the attendance before God. I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now you will be mute.
You wanna you want some of credibility? Well, I'm gonna give them to you. You're gonna lose your power of speech. That'll teach you. And all right, really, get in between the eyes of the two before.
But now you will be mute, unable to speak, until the day when these things take place, because you have not trusted his words. Well, I'd have been on Zachariah's side, you can tell that. They will all come true in due season. Meanwhile, the people outside were waiting for Zachariah to come out wondering at his delay in the temple. When he finally came out, he couldn't talk to them.
He lost power of speech. And they then realized that he had seen a vision. He kept making signs to them, or he was speechless. Then when his period of priestly service was over, he went home. Afterward, his wife Elizabeth conceived.
She went into seclusion for five months saying, in these days, the lord is acting on my behalf. He has seen fit to remove my reproach among men. This is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Now I know it's not the best thing to have a commentary when you're reading this, but the point is time is running out and this is so significant.
Now as as least some of you know, if not all of you, these what they call the infant texts or anywhere you want, that is these texts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, having to do with the earth the infancy of our blessed daughter, that is his conception, birth in those early days, they had come under very severe criticism. Thanks to some of our own compatriots. Now, you remember yesterday's reading, that long genealogy. What was the point of that? We all know that it's kind of artificial.
But that the point is that Matthew was telling you, look, this is an historical fact. This happened in history. That's what he's telling you. Now and that's why the church is throwing these texts at us. We need to have our faith reaffirmed.
It is no small matter to say that God became man in the womb of a virgin Jewish girl. Let me tell you. That is some mouthful. We explicitly say it, you know. But the point is, if you think about it, you'd say this could never happen.
And as I said yesterday, that's exactly what some good spiritual people in the early days of the church said. God could not demean himself to take on a body, not much less to be be in the womb of a woman and be born as a baby. That was impossible for these good lofty minded Christians to think, you see. As I told you yesterday, the Catholic church is grubby. We say he was born.
He was conceived. He was a baby. He was an infant. He was a man with a body just as good as any of ours, if not a little better. Now, you today, you see, we're in a world where the humanity of Christ is emphasized to the disregard, even to the denial of his divinity.
But in the early days of the church, it was just the reverse. The hangover of Platonism and all of that kind of thing. But this is a fact and I mean this isn't we're on solid ground here. Gnosticism was a reality folks, and it's still with us. It's still with us.
Don't ever make any mistake about that. These lofty people whose religion is of the mind of the of the soul and who have nothing to do with these grubby things like worship, going to mass on Sunday, and saying some prayers every day whether you feel like it or not. See, that's demeaning. And whether Christ rose physically from the dead or whether he was actually born there, that's immaterial. It's the spiritual.
You know, there's a lot of guff. That's all I can say for it. And it's been proved that way down down the years, down the years. But it's still with us, that attitude. So what the church is telling us today, Christ was human.
Now, if you if you in any court of law, think of these facts. And remember, you have the same thing at the annunciation. This sounds like a class in epistemology, but that's what we're talking about. How do you know that God became man? How do you know that?
I want some evidence. Don't tell me it's what I feel about it, or my faith, or my trust. Again, nonsense, baloney. What's the what are the hard facts in this case? And take the enunciation scene.
Here we here's a young Jewish girl. She's a spouse to a man which was almost equivalent to marriage, very serious, very formal, very solemn, and extremely responsible legally. And here she has some kind of a vision. Now these people weren't fools, you know. They knew about babies.
They knew where they came from. They knew how to make them. So when the angel gets finished talking to Mary, what does she say? How do I know you're telling me the truth? Give me some give me some motives of credibility.
She I'm using my word, but she actually says that. She says, how the how can this happen? I I don't know anything about men. I don't think about that kind of thing. How can I have a baby?
And what does the angel say? Whoever this is, look, your cousin Elizabeth who's an old woman and has been sterile, she is not a notice. She is not only pregnant, but she's going to have a son. The sex of the child is predicted. How about that?
You talk about Moody's accreditability. So what does Mary do? She gets on her her Mercedes Benz and goes down from the north. She rushes right down towards Jerusalem, and she rushes in to see if it's true. Is her cousin Elizabeth pregnant?
And by golly, she is. How about that? And we have a similar picture here. Zachariah was an old man and he had some sense. He knew that this vision could be a lot of malarkey.
He knew that. So he's telling him, he said, look, this is all very fine, but how do I know you're telling the truth? He said, okay. You're gonna be speechless, you're gonna be dumb. Until what I'm telling you takes place, and then by implication you'll get your speech back.
Do you want a motive of credibility? Then he goes home and a little later his wife is pregnant. A woman who was sterile, who's way beyond the the age of having children. And notice the sex of the baby is predicted in this case too. So if you want the hard evidence, if you want a hard judicial evaluation of the situation, could you ask for more than this?
How do you know what are your motives of certitude? What is what is the basis of your credibility in this case? They are enormous if you accept the texts. And remember, even the people who reject the text, mean, the interpretation, they have to accept these texts. Keep that in mind.
On that happy note But you see, it's terribly important for us to realize that we sit down and we say God became man ad incarnatocest in Latin, which I like better. Notice the masculine there. Why just think what you're saying. That the God that you cannot define, that you cannot imagine, that you can't make a single true proposition about, that you have no way of projecting, that this being, this reality, whatever name you want, don't get mixed up with just the word God. I don't care what name you give it.
Give it an x. That this this power became a reality, a baby in the womb of a virgin Jewish girl. That's what we're asked to believe, and that is what devout Christians down the centuries have believed. We bend our knee at the crib and say, my lord and my god. But we also add truly a son of Mary.
In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.