In the name of the father, and of the son, and the holy spirit. Amen. Just yesterday, by absolute coincidence, in reading the life Well, it's not the life, but it's it's a very illuminating informative book called Saint Augustine Bishop. Written written by Van Damir, as you know. I've been reading that book and out.
A long book. Saint Augustine spends over a page in one of his sermons on the number of a 153, or whatever it is. It's just fantastic how he weaves all kinds of things into that number. They just love to do that. Where it gets you, I have no idea.
I know this, this is one of the most mysterious appearances of our blessed Lord. Very mysterious. And so human, and so human. Notice, not once in these several appearances did was Jesus recognized right off. Why wasn't he recognized right off?
You see, one thing is sure. It that the resurrection of the Christ was not merely a resuscitated body. Notice, there had been other people raised from the dead. Lazarus was raised from the dead. The body was resuscitated.
With Jesus, that that's not the way it was. It was not a matter of a resuscitated body. It was a spiritualized body. It was a changed body. And it was changed so much that they that his most intimate friends, people had been going with him for three years or maybe a little less, didn't recognize Jesus.
So his appearance must have been considerably changed. And then yet, suddenly, they recognize him. This always bewilders me. What was what was going on? Why didn't he want to be recognized?
These are all I don't know the answer to these questions in the least. But the point I'd like to make is this, if you sat down to write an imaginative story, a fiction of this, Who in the world would come up with the facts which are given in the book of the acts of the apostles? For example, there's absolutely no expectation on the part of the disciples and the followers of Jesus that he would rise from the dead. They had no when he died on the cross and was buried, they were in total despair and hopelessness. On not one of these occasions when Christ appears to them, is there any kind of expectation?
Now, I don't know whether that word means much to you, but it was brought home to me at Lourdes in France. Lourdes is the place of the church, the basilica, the three or four of them, is down along the river, bend of the river. Then it's surrounded by the Pyrenees Mountains. So that And then around the mountains, the rim of this bowl, they have the stations of the cross. Huge life-sized figures.
Now, in the evening, there is a procession that winds around that stations of the cross, that road that winds around the mountain top. And everybody's lighting, carrying lighted candles. Now, this is at the end of the day. This is at the end of the day when people started by going to mass, when they've put the people and they've gone into the baths, when they put the whole huge open space filled with these. I was there for the French national pilgrimage, the biggest, completely covered with sick people.
Then you have benediction, and then you have supper, dinner. Then you have this in the evening. So there's a tremendous And back of this, of course, can be months of preparation. Months of preparation for saving your money, preparing the trip. So here you have a beautiful Pyrenees evening.
The people are walking slowly, very prayerfully, but all keyed up through the mountains singing hymns to the blessed mother or other hymns. And you can they sing, you can hear them all over. I was standing up there looking down upon this huge vast number of people all milling around, and then winding their way up the mountain, and circling down, and coming back down. And back of me, it's I didn't I never did see who they were, but there were two English speaking ladies. You usually can tell a British speaking person.
And one said to the other, anything can happen here. I will never forget those words. Because she was absolutely right. Anything could happen there. The atmosphere is electrified.
There's been a so called cure that afternoon, and it took hundreds of people to save the person who'd been cured from being crushed to death. So, this expectation business, every psychologist knows about it. They'll say don't think about that because if you think about it's going to happen, you know. We know this. But you don't find the suggestion of that with the disciples after Christ's death.
There's not the slightest suggestion of any expectation. They are absolutely downcast. They're walking out of Jerusalem to Emma house. Somebody comes along. What's wrong with you guys?
Lose your mother or your father or something? And they turned to this stranger and said, don't you know what's been going on in Jerusalem? Are you the only body person so darn ignorant that you don't know what's happened? That's not a suggestion that they were expecting anything, is it? And as I say, there's not one there's not one apparition of Jesus where there's any hint in the text, and that's all we have outside of the fertile imaginations of some fiction writers.
There's not the suggestion of this expectation business. Not a bit. And today above all, above all today. This is very mysterious. The way Jesus appears and isn't recognized, and then he's recognized, and then he disappears.
I think this is so applicable in our lives. Because we expect the I tell you, you're gonna get tired of my saying this, but I'll not get tired of saying it. We are today key to this experiential religion. We want to experience Christ. We want to be reborn Christians.
We want to have that feeling, that emotion, that in all that glow of being followers of Jesus. Only yesterday I met a person who said only once in their life did they have an experience of the presence of God. I felt like saying, what was it? Did you have too many drinks? That's what I think of that.
No Christian can run their lives on religious experience. It's a matter of faith. As Thomas said, my Lord and my God. The name of the Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.