A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. First, this is a continuation of the infancy narrative as it's called. This is right after the annunciation, after the our blessed mother has heard and talked with this angel, whatever that was, and she is going to be the mother of the Messiah. Remember, the angel without her asking tells her, well, now your your your relation Elizabeth, this is up in Nazareth. That's up in the northern part.
He said, your your relation down there in the southern part in Judea is going to have a baby. She was old. She was sterile. So we pick up the story at that point. So Mary set out, that is she left Nazareth going south down to Judea, proceeding in haste into the hill country to a town of Judah, pretty close to Jerusalem, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby in her womb stirred. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. But who am I that the mother of my lord should come to me? The moment that your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby stirred for joy in my womb. Blessed is she who trusted that the lord's words to her would be fulfilled.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Well, all my inclinations, passions, emotions, feelings, and sentiments suggest a few well chosen words on this reading today. Instead, I wanna just touch on what I something that came over the TV last evening plus something else that was in the paper yesterday. Now, I don't know whether you saw it, but there was a panel discussion. I got in on it just accidentally because I certainly wouldn't have selected it.
But once on it, I stuck with it for a while. It was it was a very sincere effort on the tar part of some Washington station to gather a panel to discuss this matter of what can be done done about the bad state of public school education. Now they're talking in terms of elementary and high school, I guess, together. It was a very distinguished group. There were two or three superintendents of schools, big great big areas, Fairfax for one, Prince George's another.
It was a hodgepodge, about maybe I don't know, maybe you saw people on the panel. But what struck me there was an industrialist, he made more sense than anybody, although he was wrong. He made more sense. He was very consistent. He knew what he was talking about.
One thing struck me, of these great educators for whom as you know I have the highest admiration, said we must educate our young people to be productive citizens. Productive citizens. The businessman, at least he was very consistent. He said that every big corporation in The United States today is crying out for good employees. That what what he called those entering the workforce are awful, illiterate, etcetera, etcetera.
So he wants good schools because they want good employees to keep a good business going. At least he was consistent. Now you think about this. Is the aim of education to make productive citizens? Now just think of that with all this hellabaloo about somebody or other who's been in a coma for seven years, and at last, the court has given the parents of this woman who's about 28 or 30 now a right to pull the plug as they say and let her die.
This is all yesterday's news. How do you put these two things together? That woman who's been in a coma after an automobile accident for seven years, is she a productive citizen? If it is, the word productive certainly has a very unique meaning in probably a very specialized universe of discourse. On the other hand, here we have these pompous educators telling us that the end of education is to make productive citizens.
They probably never heard of Plato's Republic university as they wouldn't talk such garbage. Even Plato had a better sense than that, a productive citizen. Notice that word productive. Not an honorable, not a law abiding, not a moral, not a good citizen, a productive citizen. What are they gonna produce?
I don't know. But this these are the people who are deciding the lives, the futures, the destiny, not a one or two kids, but a whole whole school system. Now I wanna tie in right now. I can't give you the details of the thing, but some place in Maryland, they they have an enormous Christmas tree. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of lights are burning on the tree.
All 75,000 people who were visited last year. Would you mind telling me what's what that's all about? Why do you have a Christmas tree at this time of the year? Why do you have all these lights? What's all the glamour about?
What's all the fun and games about? There's no sign of a crib, of course. Can't have that. There's no sign of Christ in any way. Can't have that.
But when you have 2578 9,000,000 lights burning, poor qual. Why the lights? And right away I thought of an Easter I spent down in Indian Head fifty four years ago. That's fifty four years ago. I went down, the pastor had had a heart attack, so I went down to help him out over Easter.
Now he when he came down there, I forget he's he died a week later, but he told me himself when he came down to India, that's far down on the Potomac, he got a sick call out in the swamps one day and there were still black people living out in those swamps after they'd been kicked off the plantations. They were living in their own isolated little places because they they were near the water because they got the reeds from the Potomac and built little huts. Now here's the point, when he went out on this sick call to one to someone who was sick there, he saw a lot of the kids shooting off firecrackers. It was December 25. So he asked one of the kids, what what are you doing with all these firecrackers?
We don't know, but we're shooting them off. We're having fun. All connection with the birth of Christ forgotten. Not even a suggestion. All these lights and all this hellabaloo about lights and all that, what's the point of it?
Oh, yes. We've eliminated the oratory of of the messiah of Handel's messiah, and we put in Elijah, the great prophet, who has absolutely no connection to speak of with either Christmas or Easter. Of course, that's the point of Folks, this is your world. This was in yesterday's paper. The Elijah business was last Sunday.
This is your world. It's the world that has the lights with no Christ. It has some of the consequences of Christmas without a Christ in the mass and no mass. What do you think? Isn't this nonsense?
Isn't this nonsense? If there's no Christ and no mass in Christmas, then why do we use the word Christ's mass? Now we've we've been at this business of celebrating Christmas for nearly four weeks now. As I say, most so much of the liturgy has to do with what seems to be Christ's coming. Well, of course, he's going to come.
It's his second coming. But the point that we that this is it's very misleading. Because if you take it literally, you would say Christ hasn't come. We're getting ready for his coming. Well, in in a sense, that's absolutely true.
But in another sense, it's absolutely false. Because if you're talking about Christ's coming now we're talking about god's coming. Let's get this straight. We're talking about god becoming man. A human being, it's absolutely unthinkable.
But it either happened or didn't happen. If it didn't happen, then let's stop playing childish games. Even kids have more sense. But if it did happen, then it should have changed the world. And we're not looking to the future.
We're looking to the past. We're looking to the past because we say we have a savior. God has become man. Jesus Christ was born, perfect past tense, but it's all useless unless he's born again in my life and lives in my life. I'm all for burning the candles and the lights, thousands of them.
I'm all for singing hallelujahs or for firing off the the rockets and the firecrackers and all the rest. I'm for all for that. It's a joyful occasion, but let's not forget why it's joyful. Why is it? Why does the should the whole world shout with joy?
Not because we're burning lights, not because we're shooting off firecrackers, but because there was a time when all of that had meaning and significance. It was celebrating the birthday of God. God's birthday. Think of that. You think of what that that God almighty, the unspeakable, the unimaginable, the untouchable, the unhearable, the inexpressible God became one of us, a human being, completely human, words worth to the contrary notwithstanding, completely human.
He we have a savior, and therefore, in fact, let us burn the candles and light the lights and shoot the rockets. Do everything we can to express our joy in a savior, but with a sincere, profound prayer that he did not come in vain for me. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.