In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. The big difficulty, I would say the almost insurmountable difficulty of Saint Luke, is not Luke, but ourselves. This story in the first few chapters of Saint Luke, as you know, have come under the severest criticism even by our great and learned so called Catholic scripture scholars. Remember, what we're talking about here is God becoming man.
How often do you think about God? You've got you can't do this when you're surrounded with a lot of people and noise and a lot of baldder roll. You've got to be exposed to some kind of immensity. Whether it's the immensity of the sky, the sea, the mountains, the desert, the prairies, or whether it be the immensity of your own aridness when you seem to be totally alone. There is no way we can comprehend God.
No way. There is not a single word we can say about God which is literally true, univocally true. Not a single word. Even the little verb is can't be applied univocally to God and to man or the world. Can't be.
This is what we're talking about. God becoming a human being in the womb of a Jewish girl up in Galilee. Now this story is so familiar to us that, you know, it rolls off of us with the proverbial ease of the water on the duck's back. But if we only give ourselves a minute to think, what we what are we talking about when we're talking about God? The word is thrown around enough.
Now we're saying he became man, human being, in every way human, with an absolutely integrity, a human nature of the utmost integrity. That's what we say. And it doesn't faze us. It fazes atheists. That's the reason I admire an atheist because an atheist says that's a lot of hogwash.
Because if it's not true, then it is hogwash. It's worse than that. Now, these texts, if you've read anything about this criticism of Saint Luke You know, I said this, Clive Staple Lewis says, the one thing you have to be aware and be afraid of and avoid are scripture scholars. Now Lewis was a man who devoted his life to language. He knew, he knew all the dangers of words and books, and the printed and the written word.
He knew all about it. He said, beware of scripture scholars. You see, what impresses me here I'm not saying that that our blessed lady, when she saw Elizabeth, spouted out the Magnificat. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying this, that we're dealing here with events that were well known.
Well known. Zacharias was a well known character in the temple. He was not an anonymous person like this little girl coming from Galilee. He was a well known man. His wife was well known, and it was well known that she was sterile.
It was public knowledge, and that public knowledge was a great affliction in the Jewish society. And they were both in advanced age. And sure she comes along pregnant. And notice, that is what the what the angel or whatever it was happened up in Galilee. When this little girl was told she was to be the mother of God.
And she says, look, how can this happen? Are you kidding me? Am I dreaming? And the message comes, well, go down and look at your cousin Elizabeth. Then ask, am I am I are you dreaming?
But now look at her. She's pregnant, your cousin, that old woman who was sterile. Now, this is you can't get out of this. This is not this doesn't rest about this on this text, on that word, or or how we find this phrase, or something in the old testament. This is based upon public knowledge.
And Saint Luke is writing when people were still living who could have been alive at the time. Look, the greatest thing that ever happened in this world was God becoming man. That's either true or false. There's no gray matter here. It is either true or false.
And if it's false, then let's get rid of it. Because it certainly has been a terrible affliction to the world. But if it's true that God became man in the womb of a virgin girl named Mary, then it is the greatest thing that ever happened. And it's the greatest thing, or ought to be the greatest thing in our lives. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.