A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Zechariah, the father of John, filled with the holy spirit, uttered this prophecy. Blessed be the lord, the god of Israel, because he has visited and ransomed his people. He has raised a horn of saving strength for us in the house of David, his servant, as he promised through the mouths of his holy ones, the prophets of ancient times, salvation from our enemies and from the hands of all our foes. He has dealt mercifully with our fathers and remembered the holy covenant he made.
The oath he swore to Abraham, our father, he would grant us. That rid of fear and delivered from the enemy, we should serve him devoutly, and through all our days, be holy in his sight. And you, oh child, shall be called prophet of the most high. For you shall go before the lord to prepare straight paths for him. Giving his people a knowledge of salvation in freedom from their sins.
All this is the work of the kindness of our god. He, the day spring, shall visit us in his mercy to shine on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. Of course, it's very obvious why we have this particular excerpt from Saint Luke, which are the words put into the mouth of Zachariah. Now how much of this Zachariah actually uttered, I don't know. The point is, much of this is taken from the Old Testament, and it expresses the the ideas, the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings of the of John I mean, of Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, who is to be the precursor of Jesus Christ the lord. Now, today, and I I don't I don't criticize it, today we do not make so much of this business of prophecy.
And one of the very obvious reasons about it is, what is the prophecy? Now this is the remember, when you're dealing with a book, you're dealing with a book. And the bible is no different in some ways from any other book. And when you go back in the old testament and count as plenty of people have done, what is what are called the messianic prophecies, that is prophecies having to do with the coming of the messiah. It's depending on who does the counting, you can get as many as 200 or more.
Now the problem is which are truly messianic and which are not. Some are very clearly so, and others are probably probably so, and others are definitely not. But you see the so that's why in prophecy, the first thing you have to begin with is what it was the prophecy. And then, does it bear upon does it bear upon the, the future event that you say it does? These are difficult problems, of course.
Now, there's one little phrase in here that always strikes me, and that is that sin, in some way, obstructs knowledge. And I and I, you know, I I've heard this all the way back to Saint Augustine, and of course before Saint Augustine. But there's no question about it. There's there's a certain perspicacity, an insight to an innocent person's mind. And the best example of that is a young child, or sometimes what we call a naive adult, where we we sort of downgrade their lack of sophistication, or their lack of we or their their great directness.
I've seen plenty of examples of this, plenty. And and Mula, and I'm sure you have too, that an immoral life obstructs our intelligence. There's some connection between these two things. Sin is darkness. And the And on the reverse side, a virtuous person has a has a clearer intellect.
I suppose we shouldn't be astonished at this at all, but experimentally, I have plenty of evidence for it. Plenty of evidence. Now, when we approach our blessed lord as we're doing, we're the first ones in this church on the on Christmas eve, Let us remember this. And I keep coming back to this. You see, the great hope of the Christian isn't that the Christian is sinless, but that the Christian has Christ, a savior.
Now this is one thing I've got to congratulate and applaud the fundamentalists for. I grew up with we didn't call them fundamentals there, but you know the maybe you do, maybe you don't, but I grew up in a small town where on a Sunday afternoon, no matter where you went you could hear somebody blasting the heavens with with hymns singing and hallelujahs and all that kind of thing. And of course, I I don't have too much regard for it now. But the thing is, the fundamentalist, as I recall seeing a lot of these things were public. For example, when they had a public baptism in the in the river that went through the town, and you saw all these people down there getting baptized in their sheets and everything.
Well, you couldn't miss it. The bridge would be lined up with people. Now, the one thing that you've got to hand a fundamentalist is this, their belief and acceptance of Jesus Christ their savior. We may talk about the sawdust trail and all those things, but that's one thing they have. Their complete reliance upon Christ their savior.
Now it may be very emotional, but just remember there have been first class atheists who who knew a lot more about Jesus Christ than a lot of these what we call ignorant souls. I resent that phrase very much. Because, of course, in English you can't use the word ignorant anymore. But the thing is, do we realize that our connection with Jesus Christ isn't because we're sinless? He didn't come to save a bunch of saints.
How do I know it? He said that. Christ said that. He said, I've called not to call the just but sinners. Do we know what that means?
Remember, sin is pretty ugly in many ways. Not the object of sin. Notice what I said, not the object of sin. No one sins because they don't want what they want. Sin is very attractive in many ways.
If it wasn't, who 'd be doing it? But there there's another side to sin which is really repulsive in many, many ways. And the wounds of sin are even worse. And it's this kind of of stuff that Jesus Christ came to save. He took upon us our sins.
Now there's a an article in yesterday's post on who is Jesus Christ by a Catholic theologian, Catholic University. I would recommend you to read it. But the point is I'm trying to make yesterday in my well chosen remarks was this, the Catholic church, my faith doesn't rest upon Saint Luke or Saint Matthew or Saint Mark or Saint John or Saint Paul. Remember, you had a church decades before you ever had the book, the New Testament. We don't have that till about a 100 AD.
So let them argue all they want about who is Jesus Christ best based upon historical criticism. Let them that's fine. Let everybody have a picnic. But the point is, let's come back to the reality that Jesus Christ didn't write a book. He didn't leave a single memorandum, as far as I know, as far as anybody knows.
He didn't ask anybody to write a book. So that the church of Jesus Christ rests upon his his statement, thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, going therefore teach ye all nations, and I will be with you until the end of time. He didn't say it's going to come out of a book. And so our faith in Jesus Christ rests upon more than that. It rests upon that partially, of course.
But it rests upon the living voice of his living church coming down the centuries, right to 1985. And so we come back to where we start. That in some way or other, I don't know, but some way or other we say, man fell. There was sin. And then we all contribute our own little bits.
We all do. Remember, I've said this many times, there's only one person to whom Jesus Christ assured heaven while he was on this earth, and that was to the thief on the cross with him, not to the good people. To the thief on the cross, this day you will be with me in paradise. It's the only time Jesus said that to anybody. And so as we head in to the Christmas season, when we celebrate the anniversary of the coming of our lord, it's not a future tense, it's perfect past tense.
We have a savior. And if there's anything that should put joy and hope and love into our hearts, no matter what we're surrounded with, is this absolute confidence that God almighty became man to be my savior. Little old me. The name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.