A reading of the holy gospel according to saint Luke. Of course, this is part, you know, of the infancy narratives of our blessed lord. When Elizabeth's time, that is, of course, the mother of John the Baptist, for delivery arrived, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives, upon hearing that the lord had extended his mercy to Elizabeth, rejoice with her. When they assembled for the circumcision of the child, on the eighth day after his birth, they intended to call him after his father, Zechariah.
But at this, his mother intervened saying, no. His name is to be John. Her friends pointed out to Elizabeth, none of your relatives have that name. And then using signs, they asked the father, Zechariah, what he wanted the child to be called. Zechariah asked for a writing table and wrote the words, his name is John.
This astonished everybody. At that moment, Zacharias' mouth was open and his tongue loosed, and he began to pray speak in praise of God. Fear descended upon everybody in the neighborhood and throughout the hill country of Judea where these happenings began to be recounted to the last detail. All who heard about it stored these things up in their hearts saying, what will this child be? And was not the hand of the lord upon him?
Child, that is John, of course, grew up and matured in spirit. He lived in the desert until the day when he made his public appearance in Israel. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. It may sound almost like classically to some people.
It would to certain Europeans, but I never can read anything about John, that is John the Baptist, without vividly remember, sometimes going back and rereading Oscar Wilde's famous play Salome, which he remember, he wrote in French, not in English. Of course, it's called Salome, but the main character in that drama is, of course, John the Baptist. He never appears. He's down in the dungeon in the cistern. And the whole show is about Herod and Herodias and Salome who did that little dance.
Unfortunately, it this show, that's what it was, it was for the theater, took it got a bad name because of Salome's dancing of the veils, you know. But there's much more to that than Salome's I mean, there's much more to that drama than the little girl dancing around shedding veils. If any of you have read it, you'll know how true that is. Now what I you see that I I I said in the beginning that this it belongs to the infancy narrative of our lord. The first Luke the first chapter of Saint Luke.
And as most of you know, if all of you don't know, there's a tremendous amount of controversy about the historicity of this first chapter of Saint Luke. And if you read these biblical scholars, you'll come up with a great measure of confusion. But what I object to is this. You would think that the only testimony we have about Saint John and and our Christ, the annunciation, and the visitation, and his birth, and all of that, the Magi coming, that we only had that on the testimony of the of this one gospel, Saint Luke. Whereas we know a lot about Saint John.
And my point is this, you know, the where where you have a story. Remember, Saint Luke's gospel for sure was written before January. Be that's to be sure, between '80 and a hundred. Christ dies in '33, roughly. These events are narrated by Saint Luke.
We know about Saint John from other sources. Now here's my point. Where you have an old woman who has been publicly known to be sterile all her life, when you have in addition to that, that she's way beyond any normal childbearing age. When you have the prediction that the baby born is going to be a male. Remember, they didn't have a lot of electronics to determine the sex of a child before it's born.
When all of this was known and here we're told that down to the least detail detail was spread over Judea. And all of this was written within the memory of the older people who lived through it. You see, we're going way beyond the what these great biblical scholars and critics make of these these texts. The point is you have got to admit that either this is a monstrous lie, which needs explanation, which needs explanation. Who do who created this this great story about Saint John and his sterile wife having a baby and and and Mary coming down from Nazareth.
Because you have to remember her conception is very much tied in with Saint John. Because when the angel says you're going to become a mother and and they're not you're not gonna have a father to this baby, Mary says, you know, she was no dummy. She says, how can this happen? Babies need fathers. And the and the angel, whatever that was, tells her, look.
The holy ghost will take care of it. Now the point I wanna make, what does Mary do now? She's up there in Nazareth. She's been told about John about Elizabeth's pregnancy way down near Jerusalem or up, we should say. She immediately leaves for for for Jerusalem.
I am Karim where John was born is about seven miles from Jerusalem. Now, again, re just remember this. Christ dies in '33. Saint Luke's gospel was certainly written before a 100. That is I mean, it was public knowledge, before a 100.
There were people easily living while that was in in the course of being written. And how could you make statements like this of these tremendously impossible events? These were not events which were which were just greater than lesser. These were absolutely impossible to think of. That you have a woman up in Nazareth getting pregnant without a father, and you're having a a woman down in near near Jerusalem who's going to be a mother when everybody knew she was sterile from her her from her earliest years, when now she's way up in years.
Remember, these people knew something about having babies, and this is tremendous. And we're told that everybody in Judea knew about it. It wasn't a secret. Now if you say that this does not correspond to to to the facts, then where what where did this stuff begin? Did it come out of Saint Luke's mind as a as a fiction?
How could he get away with it? These are the things when when you hear these criticisms of of the first the the infancy chapter and the infancy narrative of Saint Luke. And this is frightfully important because you see, for the most part, the same kind of criticism that denigrates, rejects the historicity of this first chapter of Saint Luke. That is what's told there. That applies to our lord just the same.
And then what happens? Is Christ god? Because nobody denies that Christ was born. Nobody denies that today. Remember, when I was in this in the seminary, that was there was plenty of great biblical scholars saying that Christ was never an an actual fact, that Christ was nothing but a projection of human human imagination.
It was a just a human creation. Well, nobody today, in the least with any sense, even thinks of that as true. We know that Christ lived. He did exist. You see, these are frightfully important things.
And what I'm telling you good people is, as Saint Louis said I'm not Saint CS Lewis. I didn't canonize him yet. As say CS Lewis says, you but have to be very careful and beware of biblical scholars. They're not literary men. You take Joy Davidson, who became the wife of CS Lewis, and her her mysterious conversion from being a first class atheist communist, all of a sudden, becomes a Christian and a very devout Christian.
And it was through the gospels. Now she was a literary woman. She wrote. She was a a very widely published author before she became a Christian. She wrote for the communist paper.
Was She one of its editors. It was on the basis of the gospel as literature that she said they could not be the creation of a human being. Now you'll say, yes. But these literaries and these critics of the they are not literary. And remember, whatever you can say about the gospels is that they are literature.
It's a written document. Now this is you see this is this people today take their faith so uncritically. It's set to like putting on an old shoe. It's comfortable. Well, remember, your religion does not make you comfortable.
It put Christ on the cross. The name of the father and the son, holy spirit, amen.