predication.net

In today’s gospel, the Lord Jesus reminds us of the sacrament, the day’s highlight for many of us. Yes, it is the Sacrament of the Altar. After all, you come every evening, despite many difficulties, and you long to meet God. The feast Jesus speaks of in the gospel is at the fingertips of each of us. He prepares this feast for us daily, but many people, including Christians, do not care about it. The early Christians held the Sacrament of the Altar in high esteem. When someone did not go to the table of God, it was a punishment. Such a person was a warning to others. And today? You may say to me: Be glad they come at least once a year. … but what the Savior will speak to you at the meeting is in your hands! And yet, even today, there are Christians who do not meet Christ even once a year. The warning words at the end of the gospel also belong to them: “For I say unto you that none of those men who have been invited shall taste my supper” (Lk 14:24).

Brothers and sisters, do you want Jesus to close his heart to you one day? I think not. Therefore, let us consider how we justify our absence from the Altar Sacrament. The first says: “I bought a field, I need to go and see it, so I can’t come.” Is that really why? Couldn’t it be postponed an hour later? Houses and fields have no legs. It is ridiculous when a Christian Catholic conceals his dislike and non-attendance at the Sacrament of the Altar with such an excuse!

Saint Isidore was a peasant and worked in the field of the wealthy peasant John Vegas. He was seen every day at Holy Mass, and only after this spiritual feast did he go to work in the field. He was a thorn in the side of others, so he was accused of being lazy. The farmer believed the rumors and sharply reproached Isidore. The latter replied, “It is true that I go to church daily for Holy Mass, but I have never neglected my duties for her. When the harvest comes, it turns out whose field is a better machine.” The farmer was surprised because Isidore’s field brought the best harvest. And the legend tells further about the fact that the farmer once came unexpectedly to the field. Isidore was kneeling in front of the image of the Virgin Mary and praying fervently. He already wanted to sin on him, but he fell silent. For he saw in the field two angels who were working for Isidora. It is only a legend, but it explains to us the profound words of Jesus: “But seek his kingdom, and this ye shall receive in addition” (Lk 12:31).

By attending Holy Mass and Communion, no one has yet become poorer. Quite the opposite. My brother, ask your brother, who receives Holy Communion daily, what does it give him? I will answer you for him: “It encourages me, and with Jesus, even the seemingly impossible obstacles become easy for me. Christ of the Eucharist gives me strength and hope. I can concentrate better, allocate my responsibilities better, and so on.” A Christian who is serious about Christ also represents Christ in his employment. Such a Christian cannot be accused of being fussy, slacker, or hooker because he knows that whoever works with Christ prays. Many brothers and sisters turn their pews in schools and offices into altars! How? Many Holy Masses do they sacrifice for their colleagues?

Brother and sister, a Christian Catholic, is not a burden; he is not lazy, and if he does happen to doubt, see why. Aren’t you the cause of this as well? These words should perhaps be heard by those who say of us that we are killing time by unnecessarily reciting prayers and we should use the time during Mass for something more beneficial. We will also find the answer to this. A Christian who comes to the church daily approaches Holy Communion and rests best here; he recovers. He will heal at the Fremont extraordinaryuntain of peace. Such a Christian, who will take his place tomorrow, is fresh and has vigor. But let’s look at those who resent this, who spend their free time in the company of plums, rum, and wine. How do they relate to what they accuse us of? They kill their time; they also kill their forces. We do not impoverish anyone through prayer but enrich our community with love and peace.

And Christ expects this of us, for He has promised that He will compensate us many times over the hour we spend with Him.

I think churches are the only place we take Jesus’ words seriously in today’s gospel about seeking the last place. Few spontaneously choose the first place in the church. Most of us prefer to stay in the back, and woe betide anyone if anyone wants to promote us! But enough of kidding. It is clear to us, dear friends, that the central theme of God’s Word today is pride. The Gospel tells us how “on the Sabbath, Jesus went into the house of a leading Pharisee to dine, and they watched him. When he saw how the invitees chose prominent places,” he told them the parable of the feast, at which it was shown that “everyone who exalts himself will be humiliated, and whoever humiliates himself will be exalted.” In the first reading of the book of Ecclesiastics, which supports the words of the gospel, we will hear: “The greater you are, the humbler you may be, and you will find grace with God. … There is no cure for the wounds of the proud, for the shrubbery of sin will take root in them, and they will not realize it.”

So let’s talk about pride. Pride is a serious problem, so severe that Sacred Scripture and tradition insist that pride is “the root of all sins” (Ecl/Sir 9:15). Catholic tradition knows a list of the seven main sins. One of the most popular ways of portraying these sins—especially to highlight their interrelationships and the connections between them—is the metaphor of a tree. Branches are individual sins, but the trunk from which all these branches grow is pride.

Thus, pride has – and has always had – a prominent place among sins. Why? Some say that a proud person is a practical atheist. A practical atheist is worse than a theoretical atheist. A theoretical atheist denies the existence of God. However, the practical atheist recognizes God but lives without him in a useful life. With his life, he proves that he does not need God or even that God interferes with him. Of course, when he does not need God, he does not require people, either. Proud people have great difficulty in building an intimate and heartfelt relationship with God and with people. It is difficult for them to be permeated by the idea that they might depend on God and require Him. Somewhere in the depths of his being, the proud man is convinced that not only does he not need God, but even that God is the one who needs him. What is paradoxical, a proud person does not close himself either to God or to people. No, he goes to God and people; he even goes to them with an utterly forgetful love. A proud person can do – and frankly – even such acts as Mother Teresa in Calcutta. But what is a problem for him is his messianic complex: the belief that God requires him and that people need him too. A proud person will never be able to experience a sincere prayer: God, have mercy on me. He thinks that, instead, he is the one who should have an understanding of God.

What is the cause of pride? It is a feeling of greatness. This feeling not only overshadows the prominent place of God and the value of other people in the life of a proud person but even leads to the fact that a proud person will not be able to appreciate even the value of himself, his true nature. Care must be taken not to confuse pride with healthy self-esteem and healthy pride in the talents and gifts that man has received from God. The main characteristic of pride is vanity (pretentiousness), which includes two things: firstly, the disordered desire to show one’s greatness (perfection) and, secondly, the insatiable need to be recognized and recognized for everything it does. The problem with pride is that the person in it does not even need to know about it. Pride can deceive himself with many faces that can take the form of humility. However, his true face is seen by others, just as Jesus revealed it to the Pharisees in today’s gospel.

If a proud person accidentally woke up and recognized his condition, what means could help him conquer it? I will mention four.

1. Start relying on God’s providence. It will mean that you will begin to look to God as the One who is Lord of the world and history and who has everything firmly in His hands; everything, and the world, and the people, and the circumstances, and the events, and the history, and therefore you. God welcomes your help and participation in the history of salvation, but it is neither crucial nor necessary for Him. God asks of you faithfulness in His ministry, not efficiency in producing great things for Him and his people.

2. Be willing to listen to others with complete respect. This includes acknowledging other perspectives on what needs to be done, not just yours. And also, since you tend to cheat, you must be willing to hear feedback about yourself from others regularly. And in doing so, you need to beware of one of your greatest temptations: an attitude of constant self-defense (self-defense).

3. Recognize that you need the salvation of Christ. It sounds like a paradox, but many, even profoundly religious Christians, are practically not convinced that they need the redemption and salvation of Christ. They behave like self-helpers. One person being treated for a specific particular was surprised when his leader invited him to pray from the toy Ghost to know his character flaws. He was surprised that he might have some character flaws. When he yielded, he recognized that his greatest mistake—blocking the access of God’s grace within him—was pride.

4. Recognize that you need support and support from other people as well. This requires you to recognize and appreciate the gifts that others have and look at them with admiration and amazement; to ask others for help and support from time to time and thus show that you are not enough for everything yourself; so that you meet with others regularly, and even be able to open your insides to them, especially when you are struggling. In short, to let others know that you need them.

Let us pray in conclusion: Lord, I want to be a man of humility. Pride does not give me anything; on the contrary, it robs me of everything and makes me incredibly lonely. Give me humility, which is the way to you, people, and yourself.

Maybe you have asked yourself these similar questions: why do I like some people so much? Why do I feel so comfortable and pleasant in the presence of some people? The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us of pride as “the beginning of all sin.”

In the incident in the Gospel where the words “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” (Luke 14:3), they could not answer him. The words he spoke in the house of a leading Pharisee. They were words of sound judgment that all could accept. They did not take them. Why? Were they proud? The Lord Jesus only recalls all the familiar things. But if we only read the Gospel superficially, we could say that the Lord Jesus commends more modesty. It is true: The greater you are, the humbler you are, and you will find favor with the Lord. These words already give quite another meaning. They are such solemn words that he wrote: Woe to the proud! There is no remedy for the wounds of the proud, for wickedness has taken root in them.

Let us pause over the power and wickedness of pride. What pride is, every one of us knows. It is pride that makes this or that person so unsympathetic, antipathetic, and disgusting. But the worst part of the whole thing is that the proud, precisely because of his pride, cannot discover this vice of his. There is a piece of tragedy in this. Everybody likes a modest person, even if they don’t always admire him. Nobody likes a proud man, even if they sometimes admire him. What is pride? And what is humility? We can intuit rather than conceptually define that. Proud man: Living with a proud man takes only an hour or two, and an unpleasant feeling takes hold of us. We can’t always name it right away, but on more careful reflection, we discover that it is that unfortunate vice. The proud one makes life unpleasant not only for others but also for himself. He is highly vulnerable. Any little thing robs him of peace, security, joy, and pleasant feelings. Conviction of his importance, achievements, abilities, and merits, supposedly of his rightful claims and needs, makes him sensitive, irritable, and intolerant. He regards involuntary inattention as deliberate. A realistic appraisal of his actions as disrespectful and unjust. Criticism of his character and person for unfair prejudice and envy. Rebuke for insult. In his own eyes, he is a proud man of good character, remarkable to excellent, always willing to engage in a good cause, honest, loyal, considerate, and even modest; in short, he is a perfect man and a model of all virtues. A proud man repeats: though I, too, have my faults. But woe betide him if someone throws them in his face!

Pride as a vice has been named and known by all cultured peoples, but humility as a virtue pleasing to men and God is found only in biblical revelation in the Holy Scriptures. St. James writes: “God resisted the proud, but given grace to the humble” (Joh 4:6). Does God oppose the proud? Does He, like men, have His sympathies and antipathies? We can justify precisely why we dislike this or that person.

When someone reminds you of something, how do you respond? Jesus responds, too. Someone said to Jesus: “Go away from here, go away” (Luke 13:31)…?

There is no room in faith for risk-taking, underestimation, sinful calculating, etc. It is necessary not to lose proper judgment and discernment, and to persevere in goodness to the end. But such a life is not impossible. The Christian is convinced of the relevance of the words of Jesus, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:30). The Christian begs for the grace to persevere faithfully in the difficult moments, the trials of life when God often tests him like Job. It is not enough, therefore, to resolve once for the kingdom of God in life, and only once, even once a day, to remind oneself of it, but not to lose sight of the soul in all the duties and events of the day, and to keep one’s eyes fixed on God and do His will.

The love of God is so great that He not only seeks the sinner out again, giving him new grace to begin anew, but He goes to the sinner as a “good shepherd” to a straying sheep and opens His arms as a “good father” when he welcomes a prodigal son. Let us remember St. Paul. Jesus waits for the persecutor at the gates of Damascus. St. Augustine found his God while listening to the sermon of St. Ambrose, though he traveled from Carthage to Milan with entirely different motives. St. Magdalene of Cortona found God in beholding the decomposing body of her illicit husband. And others in similar situations, and others when they received the voice of God and no longer renounced it but guarded it as their treasure.

Behold how it began already with St. Edith Stein, a convert from Judaism. In Frankfurt, Edith met her friend. They decided to see the city. She was most impressed by the cathedral. What stuck in her mind? Not the beauty of the architecture, the sculpture, the paintings, but the abandoned woman is kneeling in the church, buried in a prayer shawl. For India, this is the first revelation of God present in Catholic churches. Later, she will tell about it: “It was something completely new to me. I’ll never forget it.”

We realize that if we genuinely seek God, we guard the treasure of our faith. We don’t all find it at a certain age on the roll of our lives. St. Dominic Sávio, the patron saint of minstrels and boys, found it on the day of his First Communion when he wrote in his prayer book, “I would rather die than sin.” And the thief on the cross in the last hour of his life, when he turned to Jesus with a plea, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42). We must all work on the role of our lives. 

In this “pre-soulful” time, we are asking ourselves serious questions that people have always had to and will have to ask themselves – and they are still relevant. They are not at all covered in the dust of time. Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? Why do I live? Does my life have meaning?

These questions include the gospel question, “Lord, are there few who will be saved?” (Lk 13:23). If we had the opportunity to meet Jesus, we would certainly not forgive her. The Lord Jesus does not directly answer this question, nor does He want to answer it. Why does a person ask about the number? Is he looking for reassurance in the numbers? Or does he think that when all of Israel is saved, so will he? If the number of rescued is small, the views are insignificant, and why bother then? This is how many think calculatingly. For Jesus, however, this is something more important than the number. He wants to show us how we will achieve salvation. He came for all and did not expel anyone from His kingdom. On the contrary, he cries to himself, “Come unto me all… ” (Mt 11:28).

And today, He says to us, ‘Strive! Strain! And the Greek word of the original text – agonizes that – expresses it even sharper: Struggle as with death! Wrestle to death, wrestle as an athlete who gives off his last strength to achieve his goal! Thus, we understand that whether God accepts us depends on our willingness to follow Christ. God has done everything for us. Further, humanly speaking, it can no longer go. However, it is not enough to belong in his Church or have a perfect knowledge of his doctrine without being willing to live his life.

It is necessary to realize that, by his nature, man cannot see and love God. Living in heaven requires a specific adaptation, which we do not have in our nature. If we were to live on another planet, we would need a different breathing organ because our lungs are not adapted to it. Similarly, to live happily in heaven, we require new abilities to know into know the supernatural life. This life, beyond our capabilities, was given to us in the sacrament of baptism and is constantly being enhanced by partaking in other sacraments.

The apostle John writes, “God is love.” And for this life of love, we must prepare ourselves with a dash of love for God and our neighbor. We must train pets here on earth to withstand the new conditions of heaven. Let’s see how the people around us are trying to do this together. French wholesaler Eduard Laclero turned part of his shop into a canteen for unemployed people. In the store, they are given free food, and in the adjacent dining room, they can safely eat it. If someone has money, they will receive a 30 percent discount when buying basic groceries. When Laclero was minor, one plate was prepared daily for the poor at the poor table. Today, in his shop, there are as many plates as there are hungry who come there.

This act of love, repeated daily, looks fabulous. But still, it is a reality of our times! Perhaps people might think of him as a freak, but they would be egoists whose eyes were clouded by matter. Lawler looks at people through the eyes of love, and everything is clear to him. Let’s try to open the eyes of our hearts, and perhaps a new perspective will open up for us, for life, and ourselves. We cannot open all canteens, somewhere it is not even necessary, but we must open our eyes to the heart daily. Another exciting example testifies to the fact that this is possible and necessary.

Even today, there are people in Basel willing to help the poor with moving, craft work, housekeeping, shopping, cleaning, preparing meals, and so on. Others visit the old and sick, form telephone chains so that lonely people can talk to someone on the phone, organize walks, trips, and so on. The secret to the success of this event lies in the fact that everyone who is helped, the organizers, beg to do likewise to others. In this way, love for one’s neighbors multiplies. Christ’s innovative proposal from two thousand years ago is realized here: “as ye shall ye do unto you, so ye shall do unto them.” (Lk 6:31). And people convince themselves that doing good to others is not utopia, but that it is something beautiful that causes joy. Previously hopeless, people felt others wanted them well, which gave for life. He who does well has a strong hope that someone will help him if necessary. Such a person is not afraid to come out of his egoism afterward. Gradually, he realizes that doing good is not a weakness but a special force that transforms a person so that everyone, according to his possibilities and abilities, creates a foreshadowing of heaven.

We, brothers and sisters, have many opportunities to train love. Let’s start today. Maybe in our family or neighborhood, someone feels abandoned and needs help; a few kind words… The Lord Jesus will judge us not by knowing Him, but by how we have served Him in our fellowmen. So let us not be concerned about the number. The important thing is that we know the way. Let us not miss the opportunity the Lord is giving us today! 

Do any of you know what will become of young children? Only God knows this, and we smile if we look at a photo of a famous man from childhood. Now we know that this child is a famous person. At that time, no one knew it but God, and so it is with the Church. At its beginning, there were only the Twelve – and today? The kingdom of God, founded by the Lord Jesus, is miraculously spreading worldwide. And he explains this miraculous power with the parable of the mustard seed, which is one of the smallest, but when it grows, it reaches such dimensions that even a bird can dwell on its branches. Mustard seed received its extraordinary inner strength from its Creator.

The Lord Jesus says that, so it is with the kingdom of God on earth. It miraculously spread throughout the world from small beginnings, from the number of 12 apostles and several disciples. The inner strength for the growth of the Church is given by the Holy Ghost Himself, who is her beginning, her life, who directs her and nourishes her in the hearts of everyone who receives the kingdom of God. The Lord God gave the miraculous inner power of the Holy Ghost to fulfill her great mission.

If we were to ask people what the mission of the Church is, we would undoubtedly get different answers. The most fundamental mission of the Church is to sanctify people, both the individual and the entire human family, to achieve their eternal goal. How is the Church supposed to accomplish this? This question is answered by Heavenly Father Himself, who sends us His Son, Jesus Christ, to set an example and show us how to achieve His eternal goal.

To those who wonder if He is God and what He looks like, the Lord Jesus answers in an address with St. Philip. Philip asks Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” The Lord Jesus said to him, “Philip, I have been with you for so long, and do you not know me?! He who sees me sees the Father… “ (Jn 14:8-9). To those who would like to remove all the commandments and yet want to pretend to be free and thus please God more than those who keep the commandments, the Lord Jesus says, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, as I keep the commandments of my Father, and abide in his love” (Jn 15:10). “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (Mt 5:17).

Christ supplemented the commandments by proclaiming the eight Beatitudes he had given as the basis of the Christian life. Finally, the Lord summarized them in one sentence: “This is my commandment: That ye love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). The Lord Jesus asks for this love to be complete. Man is to love not only the Lord God with all his heart, but also his friends and enemies. The tragedy of our days is that today’s man does not want to submit to this and pays a high price for his misery. Even those who think it is enough to go to church are mistakenly believed. The Lord Jesus never urged people to go to church. However, the Lord Jesus spent most of his time walking and doing good deeds, healing, instructing the ignorant in faith, saturating the lazy, and forgiving sins. Thus, he spent most of his time sanctifying a person, helping a person to be temporal and eternal happiness. This is the mission of the Church. Even in our century, the Church reminds man that Christ founded His kingdom and that He based it on pardoned hearts. Christ lives and reigns only in those hearts that humble themselves and acknowledge what Jesus said: “… for without me, there is nothing you can do. If anyone does not remain in me, they will throw him out like a branch and wither” (Jn 15:5-6).

When a person humbles himself before the Lord God and acknowledges his unworthiness, he resembles a tiny mustard seed, to which the Lord will give stature and bring an abundant harvest of tactualvalue. The mental misery of the world in our time reaches catastrophic proportions. Even today, the Lord Jesus offers His salvation to the world. He offers it through his kingdom, to which he gave his miraculous power. In the words of the holy gospel, he emphasizes to the world to humble itself and accept Jesus, for there is no salvation in anyone else but him.

If we looked today at a photograph of the apostles from when the Church was founded, we would surely smile. Today’s Church would not be placed on a single picture by any artist or photographer. Amen.

Our morality teaches us that love triumphs over duty to the law. Therefore, a mother with a sick child who cares for him does not have to go to Sunday Mass without sinning. Hat’s beginnings, God in his child. Indeed, she would have gone to that mass if the child had been healthy. We would only stand on the rule of law if we were strict rightists. But we know that God is Love. They did not want to admit this and stubbornly defended their statutes in the synagogue performances when the Lord Jesus healed a sick woman who had been hunched over for 18 years and could not straighten up on Saturday.

Because of this, there was a sharp exchange of views between Jesus and the superiors of the synagogue about celebrating the sabbath’s rest. While seeing and listening to what the Lord Jesus was doing, the nation did not accept his offer to enter the kingdom of God, rejected his calls to repentance, and stubbornly maintained his outward understanding of religion. The superior of the synagogue is angry that the Lord Jesus heals on the Sabbath. According to him, this is a big job. But he no longer considers the concern for his cattle to be heresy. The latter goes to water because he is thirsty. He can understand this, but he cannot understand helping the other – the help the Lord Jesus has shown this sick woman. What can be delivered to an animal cannot be proven to a person. Such is the opinion of the superior of the synagogue. Such teachings are Pharisaical. In this beautiful example, we can see the far-reaching consequences of the love of the Lord Jesus and the rigidity of the paragraphs of the Law of the nation’s leaders.

Saturday was a memorable day for the Jewish people to free the nation from Egyptian captivity. Therefore, even the superior of the synagogue was supposed to rejoice that one of the nation’s sisters had found liberation from her illness. The prominent certainly did not have to be wrong, but he clung very much to the regulations and knew little about love. For him, a prescription was more than an act of love.

After this explanation, let us ask ourselves a few questions: Are we not also like the superior of the synagogue? Aren’t we just prescribed? The gospel can become an opportunity for us to say goodbye to chronic faith. Adults, try to develop your confidence and dig even deeper into it. Abandon the childish ways and begin to live the truth of the time in which we find ourselves. To live your faith is to live it ever new, new, young,g and enriching. We must strip ourselves of such ideas that still bother anyone, that faith belongs to the Middle Ages, that it does not appeal to youth, that it is distant from the mentality of a man. On the contrary, we witness that faith for the one who seeks to know and understand it better becomes a great impulse to live and helps him solve problems.

The Lord Jesus healed a sick woman on the Sabbath. So he brought a new atmosphere to the celebration of the Sabbath. The Church does not depart from the teachings of Christ when it has an understanding of the temporal and regional needs of believers.

For us, Sunday is a non-working day, but that doesn’t mean we’re getting bogged down. It is a day to experience family fellowship. A day to deepen your knowledge of faith. It is a day when we can attend and use the meeting to refresh, encourage, strengthen, or bring joy to the sick and the old. It is a day when children are supposed to enjoy their parents and vice versa. That is, not only to pray but to go to church. After all, how much good can be done on one Sunday? How much joy can be caused in one Sunday sitting or meeting? Yet, we do not have to fear that we have trashed this day of the Lord. On the contrary, if we see in our brothers and sisters the Lord Jesus, it is precisely what the Lord Jesus wants to give to this day.

Our religion rightly deserves the name of being a religion of love. This is not only because we subscribe to the teachings of Christ permeated with me but because we strive to do so in practice. 

There are still people who are persuaded by the evidence of the Bible to believe in God. The standard argument attributed to, among others, by C. S. Lewis (who should have known better) states that since Jesus claimed to be the son of God, either he must have been right, or he was a fool, or he was lying: “a fool, a liar, or God.” Historical evidence
that Jesus claimed any divine status is minimal. But even if they were convincing, the proffered trinity of possibilities is ridiculously inadequate. A fourth possibility, almost too obvious, is that Jesus was honest but wrong. Plenty of people are like that. As I said, there was no reliable evidence that he thought he was divine.
The lines he wrote are compelling to people who are not accustomed to asking questions like “Who wrote this and when?”, “How did he know what to write?”, “Did those people mean how we today interpret their words?” or “Were they disinterested observers, or did their goals color the content of what they wrote?” In the nineteenth century, trained theologians have s that the Gospels were unreliable sources for studying the history of actual events. They were all written long after the death of Jesus Christ and even after the letters of the Apostle Paul, who, however, does not mention almost anything of the alleged events of Jesus’ life. They were all copied and continually rewritten over several generations of “Chinese whisperers” by fallible scribes who certainly had their own religious beliefs. An excellent example of the coloring of history with religious content is the moving legend of the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem and Herod’s subsequent murder of innocent virgins. When years after the death of Jesus, the Gospels were written, and no one knew where Jesus was born. But the Old Testament prophecy (Micah 5:1) led the Jews to assume that the long-awaited Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. In light of this prediction, it is in John’s Gospel is the specific remark that his disciples were surprised that he was not born in Bethlehem (Jn 7:41): ‘Others say, ‘This is the Christ. But others say, Is Christ to come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that Christ will come from David’s seed and the city of Bethlehem, where David lived?”
Matthew and Luke solve the problem differently, deciding that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem. They got him there, however, by different routes. According to Matthew, Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem. They did not arrive in Nazareth until long after Jesus’ birth and after their return from Egypt, where they had fled from King Herod and his murder of innocent women. According to Luke, Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth until the birth of Jesus. Getting them to the crucial moment in Bethlehem to fulfill the prophecy? And so Luke writes that when Quirinius was governor of Syria, the emperor Augustus ordered a population census, and everyone had to go “to his city.” Joseph was “of the house and the house of David,” so he had to go to “the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.” This seemed a good solution. Only historically, it is utter nonsense, as shown by A. N. Wilson in his book Jesus and Robin Lane Fox in The Unauthorized Version and others. If David existed, he lived nearly a thousand years before Mary and Joseph. Why should the Romans have demanded Joseph go to the city where his ancient ancestor lived a millennium ago? 
Luke, moreover, has botched his dating by the undiplomatic recollection of events that historians can easily verify. Under the governor of Quirinius, there was indeed an inventory – local, not imperial-for the whole empire, and later: in A.D. 6, when Herod was already long dead. Lane Fox concludes that “Luke’s story is historically implausible and internally incoherent,” but he is sympathetic to Luke’s distress and struggles to fulfill Micah’s prophecy. In the December 2000 issue of Free Inquiry, Tom Flynn, publisher of this excellent magazine, noted articles documenting the contradictions and yawning gaps in this famous Christmas story. He lists and discusses the numerous inconsistencies between Matthew and Luke, the only two evangelists dealing with Jesus’ birth (50). Robert Gillooly demonstrates there that the main characteristics of the legend of Jesus, including the star in the east, the virgin birth, the adoration of the infant king, the miracles, the execution, resurrection, and ascension to heaven are borrowed – to the last – from other religions, which by then had existed in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Matthew’s efforts to bring about the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies (descent from David, birth in Bethlehem) to attract Jewish readers, however, came to a pernicious clash with Luke’s intention to adopt Christianity for the non-Jewish populations of these areas, and by mentioning typical features of pagan Hellenistic religions (virgin birth, worship kings). The resulting contradictions are glaring but are consistently overlooked by the faithful.
Educated Christians don’t need George Gershwin to convince them, “What the Bible says doesn’t have to be always true.” However, many not-educated Christians find it necessary to believe the Bible – who see the Bible as an accurate and faithful record of history and, therefore, evidence to support their religious beliefs. I wonder if these people will never open a book they think is true to the letter. Why do they not notice the apparent contradictions? The literalist holds to the slogan that every letter in the Bible is valid. How can he leave undisturbed that Matthew pronounces twenty-eight generations for David’s posterity after Joseph, but Luke forty-one? Worse still, the names on the two lists are almost non-overlapping! In each case, however, it is significant that if Jesus was indeed born of a virgin, Joseph’s ancestors are irrelevant (do not introduce) and cannot be used as proof of the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would be a descendant of David.
In a book subtitled “The Story of Who Changed the New Testament and Why ” American biblical scholar Bart Ehrman reveals the staggering uncertainties clouding the New Testament texts.* In the introduction, he describes his personal development from a fundamentalist adherent to the Bible to a thoughtful skeptic, guided by his recognition of massive errors in Scripture. In doing so, he notes that as he moved up the ladder of American universities, from the rock-solid foundations of the “Moody Bible Institute” through Wheaton College (a slightly higher rung, but still Billy Graham’s alma mater) to world-class Princeton University at the top, at every step, he was warned that he would be in trouble if he stuck to his fundamentalist Christianity at when confronted with dangerous progressivism. He has proved it, and we, his readers, are the beneficiaries. More refreshingly iconoclastic books of biblical criticism are the aforementioned Unauthorized Version by Robin Lane Fox and Secular Bible.

Arguments for the existence of God fall into two main categories, namely à, priory, and à posterior. Thomas Aquinas’s five arguments are arguments à posterior since they are based on a worldview.
Arguments à prior are based on pure armchair reasoning; the most famous of these is the ontological argument, proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in 1078; since that time, numerous philosophers have been revived in various forms. The strange thing about it is that it was addressed not to men but to God himself, and in the form of a prayer (they could make you think that if something is capable of listening to supplication prayer, it does not need convincing of its existence). According to Anselm, we can imagine a being from whom nothing can be more significant. Even an atheist can imagine can conceive of an excellent being, even though he denies its existence in the real world. The argument continues with the sentence that a being that does not exist in the real world is already, by that act, less than perfect. This is contradictory, and abracadabra, God exists!
Let us translate this infantile argument into an appropriate language, i.e., the language of the playground, and it will read:
“Let’s bet I can prove that God exists.”
“Let’s bet you can’t.”
“Okay, imagine the most perfect, perfect, perfect being.”
“OK, now what?”
“Tell me, is this most perfect, most perfect, most perfect being real? Does it exist?
“No, it exists only in my thinking.”
“But if it were real, it would be even more perfect because a truly perfect thing must be better than some silly old thought. So I have proved that God exists. All atheists are fools.”
I let my childish sage use the term “fools” deliberately. Also, Anselm quoted the first verse of 14.
“The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God.” and dared to use the Latin term “fool.”
(Incipient) for a supposed atheist:
Even a fool, therefore, is convinced that there is something in mutual understanding from which nothing more significant can be Imaginable. For if he hears it, he understands it. And everything that is understood exists in mind. But, something from which nothing more remarkable can be imagined can exist even in my mind. But if it does exist in mind, it can also be conceived in reality; and it is more significant. The possibility that far-reaching conclusions can be drawn from such word games offends me aesthetically, so I’ll be careful not to use words like “foolishness.” Bertrand Russell (he wasn’t crazy) once said:
“It is easier to be convinced that an ontological argument is false than to state exactly where the falsity lies.” As a young man, he was convinced of this by a certain point: I remembered that exact moment one day in 1894. I was walking along Trinity Lane, and suddenly I whipped a flash through my mind (or I thought I saw it) that the ontological argument was valid. I went to buy a packet of tobacco; on my way back, I threw it up and cried out with all my might, “Great Manitou.
The ontological argument is valid !”
I wonder why Russell didn’t say something like, “Lord runt, that ontological argument seems to me to be acceptable. But wouldn’t it be too lovely if the great truth of the universe relied on a mere pun? Better to resolve it with some paradox, like Zeno’s. “* (*Zeno’s paradox is too well known to be belittled by a footnote, but so be it. Achilles runs ten times faster than the tortoise, giving it a 100-meter head start. When Achilles outruns them, the tortoise is 10 meters ahead of him. When Achilles runs those 10 meters, the turtle is 1 meter ahead of him. When he runs that 1 meter, the tortoise is 0.1 meters ahead of him … and so on ad infinitum; Achilles the tortoise never catches up.)
The Greeks had a hard time when Zeno “proved” that Achilles would never catch up with the tortoise. His reasoning was categorized as a paradox, waiting for later generations of mathematicians to explain it. The possible
It proved possible using the theory of infinite series converging to a limit value. Of course, Russell was as capable as anyone of understanding why the entablature should not be blown up in celebration of Achilles’ defeat in catching up with the tortoise. Why wasn’t he equally careful in the case of St. Anselm? I suspect that he was an excessively peaceable atheist, accepting disappointment when it seemed to require logic.* (* We are experiencing something similar today in the over-published retreat of the philosopher Antony Flew, who, in his old age, announced his conversion to a belief in a kind of deism (thus provoking a feverish repetition of this statement on the internet). In contrast, Russell was a great philosopher. He received the Nobel Prize. Flew’s alleged conversion will perhaps be rewarded with the Templeton Prize.