A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Now notice we had the reading of Saint Matthew. Now we have the reading of Saint Luke, both of them bearing upon the annunciation, the incarnation of the son of God. 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. With these words, Mary was deeply troubled and wondered what it all might mean. Then 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 the son of the most high. The lord god will give him the throne of David, his father. He will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and his reign will be without end.
Mary said in reply to the angel, how can this take place? For 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. Therefore, the holy offspring to be born of you will be called son of god. Know that Elizabeth, your kinswoman, has conceived son in her old age.
She who was thought to be sterile is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with god. Mary said, I am the maidservant of the lord. Let it be done to me as you say. And with that, the angel left her. And this is indeed the good news of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. As I said the other morning, these what is these texts which are called the infancy texts, Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, and especially Saint Luke, are highly controversial. And even among, well, like Father Ray Brown, he wrote a whole book on it. And, when you've finished it, you don't know where you stand.
Now, see, I'm just a godforsaken Aristotelian. I believe in beginning with good, solid facts. Facts. Now facts is the perfect past tense of the verb facio. It's perfect past tense.
Notice, it's something which has happened. It is. It's existential. It is. Now all this talk about these infancy texts, and I respect them very much, Boatman and all of them.
They're they you know, I have nothing to guess. But the point is I made the other morning. Our the the Catholic church is not based upon a book. It's alright to talk about Jews and Judaism is based upon a book. It certainly is.
It's very correct to talk about, Islam and to say that's based upon a book. It certainly is the Quran, And I hope all of you have read it. You better get acquainted with it. It's one of the well, it's a very see, we we don't realize how widespread that religion is, and people have a very distorted notion of of Islamism. They that is based upon a book.
A man wrote a book. Nobody ever claimed that that mum Muhammad was anything but a man. What kind of a man? That's a horse of another color, I may say. But he was a man.
The Catholic church isn't isn't based upon a book, and you still read that by intelligent scholars. I mean, well, yeah, they are, I guess. The we don't have Saint Luke until about the end of the first century. Now we have the epistles of Saint Paul about 50 or 55, but they we do not have the the the four gospels until the end of the first century. What happened in between?
Did the church come into existence only after we got a book? If so, where did the book come from? Who got it? Who made it? Who guaranteed it?
Or what have you? Think about it. We don't rest our faith upon those texts of Saint Luke or Saint Matthew. Now I'm not downgrading these texts. I'm not saying I I firmly believe.
If they're not historical, then I could care less. But that is almost irrelevant. We say, I believe in the holy Catholic church. No Catholic ever said I believe in a book. Keep that in mind.
Because as I said, don't underrate the thinness of the ice we walk. I don't know whether that figure means much to you, but it sure means a lot to me. When we used to, at the very first bit of a little bit of frost, we would go down into the deeper valleys to see if the ice ponds had frozen over. And even when the ice would wave as you walked on, it would say that's good for skating. Well, it was until you went in, and then you decided that that was a bad guess.
But the thing is, we're living in a world in which is very antagonistic to Jesus Christ. It's so antagonistic that it ignores it. I don't know why I've there was an article in the New York Times for Sunday, which was extremely significant to me. I've I've brought it to people's attention. It doesn't seem to register.
First of all, there's a great oratorio called the Messiah. Well, you know what Messiah means. It was written by Handel. I've heard some magnificent, renditions of that several times out at the Naval Academy. It's very commonplace for Christmas and for Easter.
Handel's messiah. In the New York Times for Sunday, and I'm quoting it. The the the author of the it was a full page article. And he said by it's a very strange coincidence that the messiah is being displaced displaced by another oratorio, which isn't a hot number at all. It's entitled Elijah.
Now what do you make of that? Does that mean anything to you? See, we the messiah is being thrown out, so we're bringing in the, the this other oratorio called Elijah by Mendelson. And even the author of that article in the New York had said it was a very strange coincidence that this happened in December and in March. Easter is the March 31 this year, '91.
That's to me, that's a tremendous thing. We throw out the messiah, and we bring in Elijah. Who was Elijah? He was a prophet. I know that.
And the articles it was half the articles of about how poor and artario it is. We are living in a world which you can't even call anti Christian. It doesn't pay that much a cry attention to Christ even to call it to be anti. Now I'm not exaggerating this in the least. If you think I am, you're not with it.
We are and and when you when I read, and most of the time these quotations are pejoric, how many of the Saudi Arabians over there, how they almost despise our culture, I don't blame them. What they know of it, they're trying to be godfering. No more than about a week ago, professor from Catholic University told me how quite recently a youngster in the midst of a class came up and said, I have to be excused, or so worse to that effect. And the professor says, what for? He says, I have to go out and pray.
He was a Muslim. There are very few classes over at Catholic U begin with prayer, if any. When I was there and teaching, they some, but far from all, began with a prayer. Believe me, very few began. Probably none do.
I don't know. But the thing is that Muslim was excused from class to pray. So let's see, the either c s Lewis was absolutely right. Either god became man, and that is absolutely unthinkable. It's incredible.
It's impossible. Use any words you want. But that either happened or it didn't. They're contradictories, and one has to be true as old Aristotle said. See, Aristotle is thoroughly hated by the so called liberal moderates because one of those propositions has to be true.
So either it happened or it didn't. If it didn't happen, then let's not play games. But if it did happen, then my god, the whole world's changed when god became man. And then a Catholic even does more than that. He salutes the presence of Jesus Christ in the tabernacle under a little tiny piece of bread to all appearances.
What do you think of that for something incredible, unthinkable, inexpressible, impossible? Yet this is our world, and this is either true or it's not true. And if it's not true, then I respect people who believe that for doing their best to destroy it. I respect them because they're doing some thinking. But for those who say it is true, do they know what they're about?
Do we ever think about it enough that god almighty became man in the womb of a virgin girl called Mary. You talk about an oxymoron. And so our faith is in a living boy voice of Jesus Christ, the son of god, or it's not, or it's not. And the living voice of Jesus Christ is on the rock of Peter. Christ said so as clearly as anything could be said.
So it's no mystery where the truth of god is. It's very simple. The only problem is accepting it and living it. Because Christ not only expected us and warned us and commanded us to accept it, but he says you've in the least saying that you can prove everything by reason. Not in the least.
It is an act of faith. But the point is faith doesn't rest upon an absurdity. It rests upon reason of some sort. And we have every reason to salute that babe in the crib as the son of god, Jesus Christ, the son of a virgin Jewish girl named Mary. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.