The 72 and sent them out in pairs before him to every town and place that he, that is our lord, intended to visit. And he said to the 72, now, no, if there if there's an implication here that Saint Luke was among them, forget it. He was not. So our lord said to the 72, the harvest is rich, but the workers are all too few. Therefore, ask the harvest master to send workers into his harvest.
Be on your way now, and remember, I am sending you as lambs in the midst of wolves. Do not carry a walking staff or a traveling bag. Wear no sandals. Imagine that. And if you've been over there wearing no sandals, they were not exactly cement roads or even asphalt, like walking on bare pebbles, rocks, sharp rocks.
So our lord says, don't take a walking staff, don't take a traveling bag, don't wear sandals, and then do not greet anybody along the way. When entering any house, first say, peace to this house. If there is a peaceable man there, your peace will rest upon him. If not, it will come back to you. Stay in the one house eating and drinking whatever they have, for the laborer is worth his wage.
Do not move from house to house. Into whatever city you go, after they welcome you, eat what they set before you, and then cure the sick. Say to them, that is to the town, the reign of God is at hand. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
The first thing we can say about saint Luke is that we know practically nothing about him. And this for a man who is without a doubt the author of the gospel according to Saint Luke, and don't forget the acts of the apostles, which, of course, are almost totally forgotten. See, people talk about the New Testament when they're really talking about only the four gospels. And in many instances, they are even not they're not talking even about the four gospels. They're talking cheaply about the first three, the the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Now with all probabilities and the uncertainties and the confusion and the ignorance we have about Saint Luke, there are certain a certain few items which are certain, morally certain anyway. That is with not metaphysical certain as mister John McLaughlin would say. The first thing is that we have these two writings. That is the gospel according to Saint Luke. I remember the gospels according to Saint Luke is the infant narrative.
That's where we have the story the parallel stories of John the Baptist's father, Zachary, and then the annunciation to our blessed mother, and then the two join together in our mother visiting her cousin Elizabeth or her relation, Elizabeth. Now that's one thing we have. And the second thing is the book of the acts of the apostles, and that is a a wonderful book. And, of course, whenever you say that, that's put that's giving the kiss of death to something. But take it up and read it.
Remember, we're not talking about the Encyclopedia Britannica. You can sit down in one easy session and read the gospel according to Saint Luke. In a longer session, but not long at all, you can read the acts of the apostles, and that's a very dramatic story. It's very different from the the the the gospels because it's the earliest, the most primitive story we have of the church of Jesus Christ. What happened after his resurrection?
What happened after his ascension? Read the book of the acts, and you'll be astonished what you find there. You will be astonished. And it's very assuring, reassuring, comforting, all that kind of stuff. Read it.
It's the word of god. We say it is anyway. Let's sometimes we it might help us to act as if we believe to know so much of what we say. It's very difficult to do that. Now as I say, Saint Luke was very likely a convert from paganism, not a Jew.
He was Greek speaking. We know that for sure. And it's and it's mentioned in the New Testament, that is in in the gospels only three times. He Saint Paul refers to him as my dear physician. Well, he may or may not have been a doctor I mean, you know, a medical doctor.
Very likely. Well, it's very possible that he was, but so what? The next thing is referred to as his companion. And then, of course, our our Paul refers to him as his associate when Paul's in Rome, and Luke is there with him. So he's not a fictitious figure.
That's for sure. We know he lived. We know something about him. And, of course, when you go to the book of the acts, it's his story. Of course, you know that now he did not know personally Jesus Christ, and what he narrates in his gospel, he did not personally have an experience of it.
Well, then the great question is how did he know about it? Well, don't ask me. Now you've heard of father Ray Brown and father Murphy and all the rest of them, Roland Murphy. But the point is, he did not he was not he did not belong to these 72. He did not belong to the 12.
He did he did not have a personal acquaintance with Jesus Christ. That is as far as Christ when Christ was on Earth. These are some of the things we're pretty sure of. Very sure of, as a matter of fact, some of them. Now the main thing that concerns us is the authenticity of those infant narratives of Jesus Christ.
They are the ones that are held up for much criticism today. How much of it is history? How much of it is something else? Whatever you wanna call it. It's a big question, and I'm not gonna resolve it.
But I would just like to lay just a few common sense questions before you. Now get out of your mind the idea that the men and women women living in our lord's time were a bunch of ignoramuses. They were not a bunch of primitive Indians, and even the Indians weren't so primitive as some people think they were. These were very knowledgeable men and women in his day. And and above all, they had a great a much greater respect for handing down the truth than we have.
We could put it on a a computer, and that takes care of it until an electric storm comes along. Now we know that that Saint Luke wrote and and this is pretty certain that it's it's as one one critic that I read yesterday says, the tradition of Saint Luke being the author of the the gospel according to Saint Luke and the acts of the he says it is the primitive and unswerving tradition of the church. Unswerving. Unswerving, which means it's straight down the ages. That Luke is the author of these of the acts and of his gospel.
Now it's very possible, very possible that that was written before sixty three AD. '63. That would be only roughly thirty years after our lord's death. Though the outside figure is eighty AD. That would be roughly, what, fifty years after our lord's death.
Plenty of people could be living who were acquainted or could have been acquainted with the facts. Now here is just a thing I wanna lay before you. There were plenty of people who knew Saint John the bapt John the Baptist's father Zachariah. He was not an unknown figure. He was a very notable figure in the temple.
And something very odd happened to him. The man was struck down. Now those people know what it was to talk and not to talk in those days. They knew that. They knew people recovered their speech at times.
They knew that. But here's a man who was struck dumb, and then he has a son of a woman. Notice, she was sterile in her whole life, and that was public knowledge. And here in in her old age, she conceives and bears a son. Notice the sex is foretold, and they didn't have a lot of x rays running around those days.
Notice that that that the sex of Elizabeth's baby was four cats. Now these people knew a lot about having babies and whether they were boys or girls and all that kind of thing. They knew that. And so it goes for for the for the events that Luke narrates. There were when even if even if you take the latest date of eighty AD '80, roughly fifty years after our lord's death, there would be people who were very close to those events.
And remember, we are told that they knew it. Notice if you read if you read Saint Luke, that this was public knowledge. It wasn't something hidden, that the people were amazed at what happened. Now it may not have been on a computer, it may not have been in a footnote of a German dissertation, but the point is these people remembered things at least for fifty years. We don't remember them for forty eight hours.
This is just a plain common sense fact. And if Luke was making just spewing out a very maybe a likable story. I don't know. Maybe some people wouldn't think it was so likable. All this stuff about an angel appearing and God becoming actual in a a woman's womb.
Can you believe that? Can you? Don't you think if someone went around proclaiming that that that would have been news? And it was. And then the events of our blessed mother notice, the motives of credibility is we've heard a lot about this, you know, in the last in a little different context, may I say.
But notice, without our without the word being used, our blessed mother comes through with a very great demand when she says, how is this gonna happen? I don't know anything about this business of having babies. And notice, without her asking, the angel says, look, your relation notice, Mary's up there by the lake country. She's talking about her her relation down near Jerusalem, a short walk from Jerusalem. And the angel says to Mary, your your cousin or your relation down there who's been sterile in her old age, everybody knew it.
In her old age, she has conceived a son, not a baby, a son. And what does Mary do? She hikes off south. I love that. I just love it.
It's like saying, look, I wanna see that, and then I'll admit it's true. Because if all of that is true, I better better believe what the angel's saying, whatever an angel is. It's really dramatic as anything. What I'm trying to point out, this was public knowledge. And people remembered then more than they remember now.
I remember doc well, I can't go. But the thing is, we today, you know, downplay what we call tradition where people hand down things. Remember, that was the way tradition that's the way people kept track of their histories. Before we have an Italy, the Iliad, and an Odyssey, we had the thing as a oral tradition. Oral tradition.
Before we had the gospels, we had an oral tradition. That is the written gospels. So if the if Luke is making all this stuff up as some kind of a fiction, I don't care what literary word you use for it. Formula criticism and all of that stuff. If it was not authentic if it wasn't presented as authentic fact by Luke, then how do you can you account for the fact that it lasted, that it was accepted by a lot of sensible people, and that ensured it has changed the history of the world?
Because as in Flannery O'Connor's famous story, Jesus Christ transformed the world. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen. The lord