In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. Well, here we have another installment of the infancy narratives of Saint Luke, which have come under severe criticism in late years. School of scripture scholars called historical criticism. That's the name of their approach.
Now, would you please just remember what we've read? This was not a private affair. First of all, Zacharias was a well known notable figure who served in the temple of the Lord. His wife was known. They were not just a couple of nameless anonymous people living around Jerusalem.
And notice everybody around in the whole neighborhood, and notice how the text is careful to point that out, that people remembered these things. Well, wouldn't remember them? And even if the actual writing of Saint Luke's gospel wasn't as early as, for example, the the epistles of Saint Paul. Nevertheless, you're dealing with at the most about two generations. Or maybe three.
That's all you're dealing with. And here you have people, they didn't have their all the means of communication that we have and of retention and of stuff. They kept it up here. They kept it up here. And it's simply to me incredible that some of these objections are raised because we cannot, you see, have nice little footnotes and references to well known authorities and all of that kind of business.
Just keep in mind the the human scene and how and how what Luke is writing. Of course, wasn't around when this was happening. But my heavens, is there any problem about that? That he could have gotten it easily secondhand or thirdhand? Is there something wrong about that?
Most authors who write histories weren't around with when a lot of the histories they're writing about happened. It's commonplace. So, you say, well, they rest upon authorities. And then you have every page has a has a has a series of footnotes. That's the kind of thing we like today, you know.
I mean, some people do. But when you take this scene in its human element, it is so detailed, it is so exact, it is so down to earth. It's like reading the news item in the morning paper. It's very simple. Although, although what is being narrated is absolutely stupendous.
Absolutely stupendous. And I mean absolute. We don't think enough about it. We talk about the incarnation. We say God became man, then we go out and have a smoke or something in the same way.
But you see, if we must remember that that we're celebrating the birth of God in man. Nobody knows God as God. We use words. What do these words mean? And we're and we're saying that this this being or whatever came on earth as a baby.
And I often think when when our lord said in regard to Saint John, when they came to him, you know, and he said, who are you and all that? And Christ said, when you went out into the desert, what did you expect to see? I think the same question can be asked of us when you go to Bethlehem to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ. What do you expect to see? God become man in an absolutely helpless baby that needs to have its diapers changed, that can cry when it's hungry, that it suckles at its mother's breast.
You say, that's God almighty? Now, keep this in mind that there have been good serious people who could not accept such a concept that God could demean himself to take on our human bodies. I know that I know some of the antecedents of this kind of nonsense, but you have to see what they were what their real problem was, and there is a problem. And so their answer was, sure. God became man, but the body was just an illusion.
Just seemed to be there. It wasn't actually there. Because they couldn't think, they couldn't admit, they couldn't conceive in their minds of God almighty taking on a human on the flesh, and the emotions, and the feelings, and everything else of a human being. Yet, that's what we say. That's the that is what we're saying.
That God became man and ended up on the cross. That's is is that what we went out to see? Is that what people expect to find in Christ? In most instances, the answer is no. They think they're gonna find in Christ peace, tranquility, joy.
Now, wait a minute. Before I go, these things are found in Christ. But the definition is our Lord's definition and not the world's. Just this morning just this morning, there's a I noticed there was a there's a pamphlet in the in the rack back there about Colby. And in the very leg that is Maximilian Colby, the Franciscan who lost his life by taking the place of another condemned man in Auschwitz.
And at the end, they speak of his joy. Now, that's the joy you're talking of, but that's not the world's concept of joy being pushed into a dungeon to be starved to death. So, today, you just all the Christmas cards you get in the sentiments on them, they're good, they're fine. But they certainly overlooked the cross. They overlooked.
They overlooked so much of what our blessed Lord told us. They overlooked the fact that as far as I can see, our blessed Lord didn't move his little finger to make this a better world in the sense of a better government or better welfare programs or any such thing as that. He didn't even did not even offer one word of opposition to slavery. And not only the slavery, but the selling people's children for debts. He used that as an example and never said a word in opposition to it.
And so, I said this morning, think of this. What do you expect to find when you look for Jesus in Bethlehem? Is it is it going to be the Jesus of your imagination, of your of your profound wishing, of your unfulfilled desires, of your inadequacies? Is that what you expect to find? Or are you going to be looking and being prepared to accept the real honest to goodness Jesus?
That infant just as much a human infant as any baby born of woman, who lived a very short life, and God himself was put on the cross. In the name of the father, and the son, and the spirit. Amen.