A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. Upon arriving, the messenger said to Mary, rejoice, oh, highly favored daughter. The Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women. At these words, Mary was deeply troubled and wondered what the greeting might mean. But the messenger went on to say, do not fear, Mary. You have found favor with God. You shall conceive and bear a son and give him the name Jesus.
Great will be his dignity, and he will be called son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of David, his father. He will rule over the house of David forever, and his reign will be without end. Then Mary said to the angel, how can all this take place since I do not know man? The angel replied, the holy spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you.
Hence, the holy offspring to be born of you will be called son of God. Know that Elizabeth, your kinswoman, has conceived a son in her old age. She who was thought to be sterile is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God. Then Mary said, I am the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be done to me just as you say.
And with that, the angel left her. This is the gospel of the Lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Let us go back for just a brief moment to that extremely famous prophecy from Isaiah.
Therefore, the lord himself will give you this sign. The virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall you shall name him Emmanuel. Now the whole point of that prophecy rests upon the word virgin, which is, of course, a translation from a Hebrew word. And it is highly controverted just how that Hebrew word should be translated. The Christian church from the earliest days has insisted that the translation is virgin.
Some would say no, merely a maiden, which makes it somewhat ambiguous. Having said that, we can go on now to Saint Luke. And here we have, of course, with what amounts to the incarnation of God. That's what this really is, because Mary is is gets the message that she is is going to be the mother of a child. And she says, well, let it be let it happen to me just as God wants it.
So from that moment she becomes pregnant. And please notice the force of this text from Saint Luke. Mary doesn't ask the angel for proof. She doesn't ask for evidence. But without her asking it, the angel gives it to her.
Now, however this happened, what this messenger was, what what the angel in fact was, what the voice in reality was that Mary heard, the fact is some kind of a message was delivered to Mary, and Mary got the message. And as I said yesterday and the day before, you are not dealing here with a lot of crazy people. We have an idea that these people were very unsophisticated, very primitive, very naive. That simply isn't the truth. And so what we're what we have here is something that happened to Mary.
She certainly got a message. She did not ask to have it verified. She did not ask for motives of credibility. She was convinced at the end that the messenger was bringing a message from God himself, and so she said, let it be done unto me just as God wants it to be done. But now notice, it doesn't end there because this messenger goes on to tell Mary, look, your cousin Elizabeth, who has been sterile her whole life, who is now up in years an elderly woman well beyond the normal age of childbearing, she is not only pregnant, but she is in her fifth month.
Do you get the point of this? This is what's being said here. Look, you have received a fantastic fantastic message. Message. You You have have received received a a message that you have every reason not to believe, not to believe.
But if I will give you reason, I will give you evidence, I will give you proof that the message I have brought to you is authentic, that it is from God, that it is not a pipe dream, that it is not an illusion, that you are not being deluded, that you are not out of your mind. You just go down and visit your cousin Elizabeth, and you will find this woman who has been known to be sterile, who is way beyond beyond the age of having a child that she is now not only pregnant, but in her fifth month. Do you think these people knew nothing about the conception and the generation and the birth of children? Do you think they didn't know what sterility meant? Do you think they didn't know that at a certain period in life, childbearing is impossible?
And yet this is a it's the impossible, impossible, the impossible, which the angel here tells Mary has happened. Has happened. And the point I want to make is this, and as clearly and forcibly as I can, is that Mary didn't ask for proof. For whose benefit is this given? Not for Mary, she accepted it.
Isn't that an interesting question? Mary didn't say, Listen, I'd like to have some proof that this thing is all for real. No, she didn't. All she said at the end was, Let it take place according to your will. And then the messenger, on their own on its own initiative, gives her this.
And Mary does go to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and she finds Elizabeth pregnant, and as you know, with the son with her son, John the Baptizer. This is an incredible story. This has all the drama of human history in it, of human experience, but it has much more than that. Here is divinity reaching down into the very core of humanity and yet respecting, respecting the human intelligence, respecting the human reason, respecting the human integrity. The angel or this messenger, whatever it was, does not ask our blessed mother to be just a credulous human being.
It gives proof beyond dispute. And I want you to remember in this connection that when this was written, when these documents documents came came to to be be written, written, remember they were being passed around by word-of-mouth. And secondly, when they did come out as a written document, there were people who could possibly have had firsthand knowledge knowledge of this, and certainly secondhand knowledge. That is one generation removed. Just keep that in your mind.
These documents aren't from the late first century. It's extremely important at this time when we are asked to believe, to accept as true, the utterly fantastic fact that God almighty became man, It certainly seems to be true also that for this crucial act of faith, God almighty gave us a most critical motive of credibility. We are on sure grounds when we say, my lord and my god, I believe. Help thou my unbelief. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit.
Amen.