 This evening I have the challenge of presenting an overview of Luke as well as then focusing on the infancy narrative that we find in the first two chapters. So I want to make sure as we begin that all of you have the handout that was being distributed when you first came to the field house for this evening session. If anybody's missing a handout, if you didn't get one, if you could raise your hands and then we'll see if there are some extras that will be distributed to you. It's a double-sided handout, so you can see on the first side the outline of the Gospel that will facilitate an overview. And then if you flip it over you're going to see two specific areas of focus in the infancy narratives, the two-fold enunciation in Luke 1 and then also the visitation and the typology of the Ark of the Covenant there in the middle of the second side. But I want to begin at the bottom of the page with a reminder that comes to us from the Second Vatican Council. And you'll recall that we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of the year of Jubilee, which began not on January 1st, but on December 8th. And why did Pope Francis choose that day? Because it commemorated the closing of Vatican II, the 50th anniversary of the closing ceremony of the Second Vatican Council back in December 8th of 1965. And so the legacy they leave us with is often misunderstood by some, but it's really helpful for us to renew our own faith by going back to the wellspring and hearing the teaching. So we read in Dave Verbum, articles 18 and 19, the Church is always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. So two of them are written by apostles, Matthew and John, and two of them are written by those who are accompanying the apostles. Mark was Peter's companion, and Luke was Paul's companion. For what the apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, as we mean by Mark and Luke, under the inspiration of the Divine Spirit handed on to us in writing the foundation of faith, namely the fourfold Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held and continues to hold that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character, the Church unhesitatingly, asserts faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day he was taken up into heaven. Indeed after the ascension the Lord the apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done. And you can read the rest of this to see how in the Gospels we have an inspired synthesis of the truth of history. All right, now turn back over to the first side of the handout where we're going to begin the overview. What I propose is looking at Luke, the man, and then looking at Luke, the book, and then moving from there into the infancy narratives. So what do we know about St. Luke? Well we know that he was the companion of Paul. We read about this in Acts chapter 16 which begins the first of three we sections. We went here, we went there because that's right where Luke picked up in the middle of Paul's second missionary journey. We also hear Paul referring to St. Luke in Colossians 4 verse 14 where he speaks of Luke as a beloved physician. Most likely he was a Gentile, although St. Epiphanius says he was actually numbered among the 70 that were sent out in the mission of Luke 10. I think that's a little doubtful, especially because in Colossians 4 in the preceding verses Paul identifies three of his companions, Aristarchus, and then Mark and Justice, and says that these were the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers, implying that they were Jews but the others weren't. And so most likely the consensus of the other fathers of the church is almost sure and that was he's a Gentile. Now we also know as a physician and a Gentile that he was a master of the sacred page. He knew the Old Testament. He seems to have a mastery of the Greek translation that we call the Septuagint as we'll see. But we'll also find that as a physician he must have been well educated because Luke's Gospel gives us the most polished Greek. It's smooth, it's clean, prose, but he also indicates in the opening verses of chapter one something more, that it is not just written quickly or carelessly, rather as almost a historian he did his homework, his research, he consulted eyewitnesses and sources in order to give us what he describes as an orderly account, quote, unquote. So let's look at the first four verses of Luke chapter one where we read, in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, so Luke is already writing with an awareness that there are other written testimonies, probably Matthew and Mark. So a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. So we can hear Luke referring to those that he has consulted, not only the narratives that have preceded his Gospel, but also the eyewitnesses and the ministers of the word of the Gospel. And so we read in verse three that it seemed good to me also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account. And if you look at the outline you can see how carefully organized and well executed this orderly account really is. So write an orderly account for you most excellent Theophilus. Now we don't know for sure who the recipient of this letter was originally. We don't know the identity of Theophilus. We know the meaning of the name and that is a friend of God. And so in a certain sense, it's for all of us because we're called to friendship with God. Now just parenthetically, I might suggest you take a look if you're interested in scholarship at a book by James Vandercam where he studies all of the high priests in the Herodian period because he points out that there actually was a high priest named Theophilus. The problem is that his years of office were they ran from 37 to 41 AD. And so too early for Luke to have been writing the Gospel at that point while he was high priest. At the same time, we read in Josephus in his antiquities and the Jewish wars how the very last high priest before the Jewish revolt, the last high priest to reign properly before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, was a man named Matthias, son of Theophilus. And he reigned in the early 60s, around 64 to 66, which I would contend may be a likely time for Luke to have been writing his Gospel. And why? Because we know that Luke didn't just write the Gospel, he also wrote the sequel, The Book of Acts. And the Book of Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome. And you know, given Luke's concerns to show us how through the Holy Spirit, the life, the teaching, the miracles, the ministry, but also the death of Christ is reproduced in the apostles in the church. It seems that it would have been more fitting if Paul had already been dead for Luke to have described that. And so the very fact that the sequel to the Gospel, the Book of Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome, probably indicates the most likely time when he was writing both the Gospel and the sequel. And so this would have been the early 60s. And so it would have been the timeframe when Matthias, the son of Theophilus came into office as the High Priest. We also know from the Book of Acts, Chapter 6, that right before the Proto-Martyr St. Stephen's death, many of the priests in the temple were beginning to hear the Gospel and believe many were converted and baptized. And you can imagine what a challenge that must have been for the High Priest who wasn't about to convert, because it would have implied that we missed the Messiah, but not only that, but we also had a murder. It would be like people in the White House back in the Soviet era, you know, defecting to the Communist Russia. It would have been unthinkable. It would have been provocative. It would have, and in fact it did, provoked the persecution that begins with Stephen's martyrdom in 7, and then the fierce persecution that we read about in Acts 8. So Matthias, the son of Theophilus, reigning as the last High Priest, most likely his father might still have been alive, but just as Annas and Caiaphas were both priests, one was the father-in-law and Caiaphas was the son-in-law, I would just propose that this is something worthy of further exploration, especially because of the priestly emphases that we find in Luke's Gospel and in his sequel. For example, just think about how Luke's Gospel begins with a scene involving the drawing of Lot's to select what? Zechariah, the priest who will offer incense in the temple, as we read before he hears from the angel Gabriel about the birth of John the Baptist. The only other scene that we find in the synoptic tradition involving the drawing of Lot's is where, in Acts 1, Luke's sequel where we have the drawing of Lot's for Judas's replacement, namely Matthias, who therefore joins the Twelve as representing not only an apostolic college, but also the priests of the new covenant, of the new Jerusalem as it were. And so I think the more closely we pay attention to what Luke is doing in the Gospel and then in the Book of Acts, the more we're going to understand how the work of Christ in his own physical body is precisely what the Holy Spirit is replicating in the Book of Acts in his mystical body. And so I've written the paper that was published after I presented it in Oxford about 10 years ago entitled From Davidic Christology to Kingdom Ecclesiology, a study of Luke Acts. Because Luke focuses upon Jesus as the Son of David. As the King, the first one to be called a Son of God was Solomon, the Son of David. And now the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant is what Jesus embodies. And so what Jesus is in his physical body, as the Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God, the King of Kings, so the Kingdom of the King, the extension of his physical body is precisely what the Holy Spirit replicates in the Church, the mystical body in the Book of Acts. I could go on, but it's an indication of how well St. Paul mentored his companion, that this Gentile physician would become a master of the sacred page, that is the scripture of ancient Israel, and be able to draw from it so extensively to make these connections not only between the Old Testament and the New, but between what Jesus does in his physical body in his public ministry, and then what he does in his mystical body through the power of the Spirit throughout the Book of Acts. We're going to be hearing more about this as these days unfold. But now that we've looked more at Luke, the man, I'd like to consider Luke's book because, as I mentioned, it's polished. It's really amazingly clear prose. It's an orderly account, but it's also the first of a two-volume work. And I would emphasize how Luke draws out in dramatic fashion specific characters. We have in Luke's Gospel more unique characters than any other synoptic gospel. There are 23 characters in Luke's Gospel that we don't read about in Mark or Matthew or John. And that's not to mention the 77 generations in Luke's genealogy of Jesus that takes it all the way back to Adam there in Luke chapter 3. But it's not just a quantity of characters, it's also the quality of the depiction of these characters. You have a lot of unique features in these particular characters, especially the women We have more about the Blessed Virgin in Luke's Gospel than in any other. We have more information about Elizabeth who's not mentioned by any other evangelist. Anna of Asher, as well as the widow of Nine whose son is raised from the dead. Mary Magdalene is treated more fully, Joanna, Susanna, as well as Mary and Martha, the sinful woman, as well as the daughters of Jerusalem. All of these are unique characters for the most part that Luke really focuses on and develops. And there are many others as well. Luke is a great writer, a great storyteller. And what he's telling us is the truth about what Christ has said and done, especially in his teaching. And so of the 23 parables that we find in Luke's Gospel, 19 of them are unique, especially almost everybody's favorite. The parable of the prodigal son, that's only in Luke. Likewise, the parable of the good Samaritan, that's also only in Luke, the Gospel of mercy. We're gonna see that Luke speaks of mercy six times. Five out of the six references are found in the infancy narrative of Luke chapter one and two. The sixth reference to Elios, mercy, is there in the parable of the good Samaritan. Who acted as the neighbor, the one who showed mercy. And so the Gospel of mercy highlights characters who get the interlogic of the law of the covenant, which is love, love of God and love of neighbor. We're also going to see this emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit in Luke's Gospel, just as it's developed even more in his sequel. Luke refers to the penuma, the spirit more than any other evangelist. 36 times in the Gospel, 70 times in the book of Acts. To show how it is the Holy Spirit who empowers these disciples to live out the life, the death and resurrection of Jesus, but especially in the task of evangelization. Luke himself is an evangelist, but he points out that Jesus is not just the good news, he's also the proclamer. He's both the proclamer and the proclaimed. He is the first evangelist. And in fact, Luke uses that Greek verb, so on Galizzo, 10 times in the Gospel, Matthew only uses it once. And then he develops even more 15 times in the book of Acts to show again how the spirit working through the apostles in the church extends to us the life of Christ. And that's what evangelization consists of, not just hearing it once and making an initial decision, but responding to it more and more. And it's interesting because this theophilus, whoever he is, is told in Luke 1, verse 4, that Luke's intention is simple, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. And if you have an Ignatius Catholic Study Bible volume, you will find that there is a word study for that word informed because in the Greek it's catechao. It's where we get the word catechist. It's where we get the word catechesis. It draws from the Greek word echo where we hear the English form, the original, is echo, where we're hearing again and again the good news. And it's not fading if anything, it's growing. And so what Luke is giving to us, I would propose, is not only great literature with beautiful prose, he's also giving us something of a biography. I don't know the time to develop this, but I want to just mention real briefly that one of our team members, a dear friend, Dr. Brad Petrie, has a brand new book out that you've got to get, Storm the Bookstore, and I'll work out an arrangement with Brad where you can split the royalties, but it's entitled The Case for Jesus, The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ. I could spend the rest of the hour talking about this book. Instead I want to encourage you to get it because what he shows is that the Gospels are, according to historical evidence and objective research, scientifically reliable. And so a lot of scholars who pretend they're not are wrong. And it isn't just an act of faith, it really is the application of historical reason in a cautious and proper way that shows us that there is a literary genre back in the first century that any Greco-Roman reader would have recognized, namely the life of Caesar, the Baos. There are a number of books, about 10 to 20,000 words, that were the life of so-and-so, the life of such-and-such. And so Luke is giving to us what the other evangelists give us. And that is a kind of biography. Biographies of ancient figures in Greco-Roman culture focus upon the birth. They often skip big sections of the life, but also then zero in on the death, and the heroic nature of that death, as well as the service's render. And these bio, or these books that were the lives of in ancient Greco-Roman culture, were typically read in the context of a symposium. That is a meal, much like the Eucharist, which is probably where Luke wanted, or expected his gospel to be read and explained. So it is a literary masterpiece. The genre is probably a Baos, or a biography, the life of Jesus, but its purpose is evangelistic. But not simply the first time around, it really is catechetical. And as we're gonna see it unfolding from the Gospel of Luke to the Acts of the Apostles, you might even describe it as mysticogical catechesis. That it's written for the church, to be read in the church, to be actualized by the church's sacramental life through the liturgical worship, for those who are baptized into the mystery of Christ, and for those who receive the mystery of his body, blood, soul, and divinity. All of this, I think, is crucial. Not only from a faith perspective, but from the perspective of first century Greco-Roman culture and historical background. I could say more, but I need to move on, so that we're not just gonna focus simply on the figure of Luke and the Gospel of Luke. But I wanna say a few more things before I do move into the infancy narratives, because Luke gives us so much more than what we find in other Gospels. I'm not saying it's superior, it's just distinctive. For example, only Luke tells us about the glory in excelsis when the angels appeared to the shepherds and they went to see the newborn Jesus. Only Luke tells us about the rejection of Jesus there in Nazareth, his own hometown. Only Luke tells us in the next chapter about how Simon loaned Jesus the boat and there was this miraculous catch that ripped the nets. Depart from me from a sinner, Simon Peter responded. Only Luke gives us the mission of the 70 where the harvest is so plentiful, the laborers are few that Jesus is doing in the new what Moses did in the old, and that is appointing 70 elders and anointing them with his spirit to help him lead the people of God. I have come to cast fire upon the earth. I saw Satan fall like lightning. The 10 lepers who are cleansed, the only one who comes back is a Samaritan. The fact that Herod also had a trial for Jesus. The famous story of the penitent thief, remember me. In Mayas Road, my favorite story in the entire Bible is only in Luke, the final chapter verse 24, chapter 24. And we're going to hear from Dr. Berg tomorrow about another feature of Luke that is distinctive, namely his 10 fellowship meals, that there are 10 meal scenes, seven of which are unique to Luke. One of them that's not is the feeding of the 5,000. Another one that's not is the institution narrative, where we find the Eucharist being instituted in Luke 22. But Luke gives us the fullest institution account. In fact, Luke's account of the institution of the Eucharist is longer than Matthew and Mark combined. And only Luke gives us that fuller account where Jesus speaks of the blood of the new covenant. So the only time we hear the phrase new covenant in the four gospels is in Luke 22, who also uses the language of covenant more than the other evangelists. So there are more features, too. But I see the time pressing on. And so let me begin to shift the focus now over to the infancy narratives, because here again, we find many distinctive elements that are only provided by Luke. For example, as we'll see in a moment, the two-fold enunciation. First is Zechariah, and then to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Second, the visitation of the Blessed Virgin to her kin's woman, Elizabeth. And then we're also going to hear four particular liturgical hymns or prayers that we all recognize from our Catholic upbringing, the Magnificat in 146, the Benedictus of Zechariah in 167, the singing of the angels of the glory in excelsis there in chapter 215, and then the night prayer of Simeon, his song, the Numptematis, now let your servant depart in peace there in 229. Three of these are prayed continuously by the church every day in the liturgy of the hours. What a rich and beautiful tradition we find in the infancy narratives. But in addition to that, we also have Anna of Asher. We have the finding of the boy Jesus in the temple. We also find this particular genealogy at the tail end in chapter 3, where we have Jesus' genealogy, not traced back to Abraham as Matthew does in Matthew 1, but tracing it all the way back to Adam in 77 generations, where Adam is referred to as the Son of God for the first time in ancient Jewish literature. We also have the presentation, or I should say the purification and the presentation. All of these things, I believe, are important for our consideration. Now, as I move on, I want to also indicate what it is about this that is significant. I just looked down and noticed that there are a couple of things that I omitted. It's painful. I can't wait to enter into eternity. Read Brandt's book, and you'll get almost all of it. Now, what I propose now is this. Let's take a look at the infancy narrative, in particular, the annunciation, or the two-fold annunciation. Turn over the handout to the second side, and you'll see that this is peculiar because it's the only evangelist, Luke, who gives us an appearance of Gabriel. And it's a two-fold appearance, first to Zechariah, beginning in Luke 1, verse 5, and then again to the Blessed Virgin in Luke 1, verse 26. And as you see the parallelism in the chart, you can also recognize that this is not accidental. This is not something that we're superimposing upon the text. This is clearly a literary technique that was deliberately employed to show us the end of the old and the beginning of the new, and how John the Baptist was the greatest of the old, and yet he's the least when it comes to those who are born into or reborn into the new covenant. So the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah, just as he does to Mary. He addresses Zechariah, and likewise, he addresses the Blessed Virgin, although he doesn't call her by name. He refers to her as kakai retominee. Now again, I don't have the time to develop this, but I'll refer you to the footnote that explains this in the Ignatius Study Bible because it's odd that an angel would address a human by anything other than the proper name. The very fact that the angel Gabriel refers to her simply as kakai retominee, using a perfect past, a perfect participle, which indicates that she's not just filled with grace at that moment. She is fully graced from the beginning and continuously so. And then it's curious because how does Zechariah respond? We read in 1.12 that he is troubled. How does the Blessed Mother respond? In verse 29, she too is troubled, the same term. And so what does the angel say to Zechariah, do not be afraid. And likewise to the Blessed Virgin, do not be afraid. And then in that same context, you shall call his name John. And you shall call his name Jesus. And we hear about how he will be the son of the most high. He is born the son of God. And yet what you also then notice is the decisive break. The difference between Zechariah's reaction and the Blessed Virgin's response. Because what does Zechariah ask? How shall I know? Whereas the Blessed Virgin responds to Gabriel by saying, how will this be? Now the two sound very similar. In Greek as well as English. And yet the difference between the reaction of Zechariah and the response of the Blessed Virgin is clear. For example, Pope Benedict in his third volume of the trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth, the infancy narratives. I urge you to get this, to complete the first two volumes. It came out just a few months before he stepped down and so the sales really tapered off, but it is so beautiful. It is so rich. It is so clear. Even more accessible than the first two volumes. But this is what Pope Benedict says. Let us consider the difference between this response and the reaction of Zechariah who doubted the possibility of the task announced to him. That's the deeper import of how shall I know this? It's an expression of doubt. It's a search for certitude. Before I give you my consent, I want proof. Whereas the Blessed Virgin asks not whether, but rather how the promise is to be fulfilled. So when she says, how will this be? It's an expression of trust, but it's asking a question in awe and wonder. It's not looking for proof. It's rather beginning the process of pondering in her heart what it is she has heard. It is in the famous words of St. Anselm, Fidesz, Queren's Inlectum. Faith, searching, understanding. The word in Latin for seeking Queren's is also the root of the Latin verb questio. But not because she's questioning the angel, but rather the root is our English word quest. Faith is on a quest in humble childlike awe and wonder. You are going to do this, but it has to be you. But how will it be done? Seeing as I have not known a man. Now she's not asking the question because she didn't know the birds and the bees. This is not an expression of her marital status but of her virginal status. A Saint Gregory of Nisa and Saint Augustine and others have pointed out the statement of the Blessed Virgin. How shall this, or how will this be since I do not know a man is really implying the vow of a virgin such as we read about in Leviticus 27. It is a custom that goes back to the law of Moses, not something that was practiced so widely by the Jews through the ages, but one that we do know was practiced in certain circles, especially among Essenes and the Therapeutae. But the point is that the Blessed Virgin Mary accepts the word of God by an act of pure faith. But at the same time is on a quest to understand the mystery of grace of which she is the fullness thereof. And so this question is so fittingly leading to theot me he secundum verbum to him. Be it done unto me according to your word, why? Because my soul was brought into existence out of nothing for the purpose of magnifying the Lord. So she does not merit this grace in isolation from grace. She was fully graced as the angel perceives at the moment of her conception. You can draw a line between this exchange straight to Inaphobeles Deus, the definition of the immaculate conception back in 1854, where we see the church coming to a spirit-led understanding of the richness of the Blessed Virgin. That she is conceived without original sin, that's the negative way of putting it. She is conceived with the fullness of grace as we would hear the Eastern tradition saying, she is what? Anybody know? Not Theotokos, yes, but she is all holy, Panhagia. So from the moment of her conception, she possesses a holiness that exceeds our wildest dreams, our highest hopes and our own personal attainments. When you really delve into the Lucan background of Mariology, you will see why in our tradition she possesses a fullness that exceeds that of the angels and the saints combined because she is the source of the grace that we have all received to share in nothing less than Christ's own divine sonship. This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth vouchsafed to her at the moment of her conception as the act of love by God the Creator who fashions her to be something that exceeds the heavens and the earth. If we could see through the eyes of our guardian angel, we would behold not only our mother in the order of grace, we would behold the new creation. We would see the perfection of Christ's redemptive work. We would see what Luke in our tradition first painted in the icon of the Blessed Virgin. We would see who it is who will be our mother, who embodies the identity and the vocation of the church. I could go on and on, but I think you can see the literary artistry of Luke in this twofold enunciation narrative is pointing to the truth of history, but it's not just historically true, it's theologically rich, it's the mystery of faith. It's so deep as to be inexhaustible, but what better use do we have of the time that we have on this earth than to contemplate the mystery of Christ that was entrusted to her, that was narrated for us in this amazing scene that concludes the Old Testament with a barren woman giving birth to John the Baptist, the latest and the greatest of the prophets, and then a consecrated virgin conceiving the word of God, not only in her womb, but you'll recall what St. Augustine said, she conceived him in her heart before she conceived him in flesh within her womb. It was the bond of love that the Holy Spirit empowered her to express that caused this supernatural fecundity that we celebrate, not only in the gospel story, but in the rosary as well. And let me just take another moment here for another parenthetical aside because I know a number of you are familiar with St. Louis de Monfort's true devotion and total consecration, right? Todas Tuas Ego Sum was Pope St. John Paul's motto when he became Pope, quoting St. Louis de Monfort, Todas Tuas, totally yours, he said to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I might also recommend the work of a close friend and a former student and an amazing priest, Father Michael Gaitley, 33 days to morning glory, which is an adaptation of the St. Louis de Monfort, true devotion and total consecration. He draws initially for the first week from St. Louis de Monfort. Then he also draws from St. Maximilian Colby, one of my all-time favorites. Then he goes to soon to be St. Mother Teresa and finally St. John Paul II. And he makes the Bible and the Blessed Virgin Mary come together. He makes our devotion and doctrine come alive. And it's something that I am in the middle of redoing now for the eighth or ninth time, leading up to the Feast of the Assumption next month. I really urge you at this point in history, perhaps more than ever before, where our culture is going nuts. We have got to go to the Blessed Virgin and allow ourselves to entrust, to be entrusted to her as Jesus was, as Joseph was. You search the Old Testament and it's no surprise that Zechariah expresses doubt and is struck dumb until he can write John's name down and finally give consent to what the angel said. Because from the very dawn of creation, you can see a man named Adam who was made upright, totally righteous until he fell. And then you can see how the God renews that covenant again and again with Noah who ends up drunk in chapter nine and cursing his grandson. And then we have Abraham who has relations with his concubine and expects Ishmael to fulfill God's promise, not quite. Then we have Moses murdering an Egyptian and then throwing a tantrum and being excluded from the promised land. We have David as an adulterer and a murderer. As we search through the timeline of covenantal salvation history, we don't really find a holy man who remains holy and steadfast in his righteousness until Mary, until Joseph, until Jesus. What we call the holy family is the first family to be holy in salvation history. And I wanna tell you, it's our family. And I was just at Mass at 1205 today over at Christ the King here on campus. And as I was thinking about what I was gonna share, I looked up and I saw the images of Jesus in the center, Mary on the left and Joseph on the right. These aren't just three images, these are three persons. They're not just three individual persons though, they're one family inviting us to renew our covenant to become one with them because that's what the church is. It's the extended family from Nazareth which is a little trinity on earth as my patron St. Francis the sales once declared. The holy family is the living image of the divine trinity, this eternal family. This is who we are, this is what we're called to become and this is what it means to be saints. But I also wanna point out something else that we find on the handout, something else that we find in the infancy narrative, namely the visitation. Because here we find Luke declaring chapter one verse 35 that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will what? Overshadow you. The term that he uses Epischiazzo is an unusual term. You find that back in Exodus 40 at the conclusion of the book of Exodus where the glory of God that is the spirit of the Lord overshadows the tabernacle where the Ark of the Covenant was found. And as you trace the trajectory of the Ark of the Covenant through the 40 years in the wilderness when Joshua carried the Ark to the bank of the Jordan River and it did for Joshua what the Red Sea did for Moses with his staff. And then how the Ark is leading Israel out in front with the Levites who carried seven days in a row and then the seven times on the seventh day around Jericho when that comes down. But the Ark narrative isn't done until second Samuel six because the conquest of the promised land wasn't complete for centuries. It wasn't until David arose and went to the Judean hill country and he found the Ark of the Covenant. And we read in that narrative this beautiful account of how he arose and went and how he found it. And he was filled with such a sense of awe that he said, who am I that the Ark of the Lord should come to me? And he responds with leaping and dancing for joy. And likewise he pronounces a blessing upon the Lord and he sings to God with song, a song of grace and thanksgiving. And then he carries it up into Jerusalem after it had been there in the Judean hill country for three months. So what do you find in Luke? What not only Catholic scholars have noticed but even non-Catholic scholars that Luke is developing a typology to show us that Mary is in effect the Ark of the New Covenant. What happened to the Ark of the Old will go back to first second Maccabees too right before the Babylonians came to destroy Jerusalem and desecrate the temple and demolish it. The prophet Jeremiah was led by the spirit to take out the Ark and hide it in a cave. And then he said it wouldn't be found until the mercy of the Lord was shown. And so they were awaiting the Ark to be found. But really what Jeremiah was pointing forward to was not simply that wooden box made of acacia wood for durability and permanence covered with gold, filled with the stone tablets, the word of God in stone, along with the manna that sustained Israel in the wilderness for 40 years and Aaron's rod that blossomed. All of that was a sign of something greater. The immaculate humanity of the blessed virgin overshadowed with the divinity of her own fullness of grace containing the word not in stone but in flesh. The manna, which is the true manna of the new covenant, the bread of life, which is given for the life of the world. And so with all of that as the background, we read in Luke 1, verse 39, after the Holy Spirit overshadowed the blessed virgin in verse 35, like it did the tabernacle in the Ark of the Covenant, Mary does what David did. She arose and went with haste into the hill country of Judea, like we read in 2nd Samuel 6,2. And then Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry, God bless that are you. Just as David blessed the people in the name of the Lord. And then Elizabeth cries, why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Just as David cried out, how can the Ark of the Lord come to me? For behold the babe, John the Baptist leapt in my womb for joy. Just as Michelle looked out the window and saw David leaping and dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, before the Lord in verse 16. And just as the Ark remained in the Judean hill country for three months, so Luke throws in this extra detail in verse 56, Mary remained with her for about three months. Now these aren't coincidences, these are convergences that show us like spokes that converge on the hub of a wheel how all of the details of the Old Covenant are fulfilled by the new. But not by Jesus alone, but through the Holy Spirit's work. And not just in the church, but particularly in the blessed Virgin Mary. So I would suggest to you that the more we contemplate these parallels, the more we're gonna see the background to the vision of John and the Apocalypse, especially there in chapter 11, verse 19, where John suddenly announces without warning that the Ark of God's temple is open but not on earth but in heaven. And the Ark of the Covenant was seen. The Jewish Christian readers of John's Apocalypse must have gasped, where is it? What condition is it in? How do we fetch it? We haven't seen it for centuries. But John doesn't go on to talk about a wooden box covered with gold and where it's hidden and how to get it and what condition it is. Instead he announces in the next verse that a sign appears in heaven and that is a woman clothed with the sun. And then the moon is under her feet and she's crowned with 12 stars. She is the new Eve. She is the queen mother of the son of David. But above all, she is the Ark of the new covenant. She is the means by which the old is fulfilled in the new but she embodies the fullness of the grace of the new covenant just as she bears the new Adam. She bears the new Moses. She bears the new Solomon. And with Jesus she ushers in a new creation as the new Adam and Eve, the new Exodus with the new Moses and the Ark of the new covenant and the new Jerusalem, the new kingdom with Solomon, the new son of David and the queen mother as well. I've detailed all of this in my book Hail Holy Queen but I discovered this in my own research before becoming a Catholic. And then I found that right after becoming a Catholic in the readings for the Feast of the Assumption. There on August 15th in my very first year as a Catholic I thought I had made the connections with all of these readings from the old and the new until I stood up and I listened to the gospel and I realized that 2 Samuel 6 along with Psalm 132 the only Psalm devoted to the Ark of the covenant and how David treated it. And then Revelation 11 verse 19 through chapter 12 verse 19. And then finally the visitation of the blessed virgin to Elizabeth, her kin's woman. And that's when I realized how highly unoriginal I was in making this so-called discovery. It's like Chesterton traveling around the world to discover England, you know? This is there in the church's living tradition. The Holy Spirit awakens it in us at various times. But I wanna propose to you that this is what happened to Luke who was a great writer, a reliable witness but a contemplative, a mystic and a mysticog who is cataclyzing theophilus and all of the other friends of God so that we might discover the mystery of Christ in the womb of Mary making her a greater Ark than any box could ever be and making her our mother as well as his. Now there's more to it but not more time to it. So we've already touched upon the annunciation. We've touched upon the visitation. All we have a time left for is the purification and the presentation and for that I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna use my own book Joy to the World which is the second most recent book I did right before the creed. I wanna focus for a moment upon two things. Well, first the purification because a lot of people raised the question why would Mary need to be purified? She's sinless. And besides that, why do women need to be purified anyway after childbirth? Does that just imply that sex is sinful? In my book on page 132 I say and I quote, this does not mean that the law considered sex or womanhood or childbirth to be dirty or sinful. No, just as the priest had to purify the holy vessels every time they were used in the temple liturgy after pouring out wine libations for example or splashing sacrificial blood upon the altar so a woman who gave birth also had to be purified following the holy and sacred use of her body in giving birth to a new child. Purification acknowledges at one time the holiness of the vessel but the need for that holiness to be renewed so they can once again carry on God's sacred purposes. After the vessels are purified they're used again by the priest in the sacred liturgy of the temple so that God can use these instruments to visit his people. And then I go on to explain this profound analogy between the temple and the body and not just the human body in general but the woman's body as wife and mother in particular concluding that Mary was sinless. She was full of grace in no way did she need to be cleansed of sin but she knew that grace was a divine gift that she could never merit on her own apart from God in her humility therefore she submitted to the law requiring purification in Leviticus 12 verse eight. She keeps the law in its minute detail just as her son does to fulfill all righteousness. But I also wanna do something more and that is I wanna touch upon this presentation in two ways. First I wanna draw from the significance of the old and the new because we only find Gabriel here in the new in the Gospel of Luke in the infancy narrative and we only find Gabriel in the old delivering an oracle in the book of Daniel. Chapters eight and nine and most especially Daniel nine where the redemption of Jerusalem was foretold by the angel Gabriel in response to Daniel's heartfelt prayer of penance. After Daniel is done with his penitential prayer in the first half of chapter nine angel the angel Gabriel comes and announces what? That the Lord will put an end to iniquity. There will be one who's anointed the animal sacrifices will cease but the prophecy will be fulfilled. The city will be destroyed but God will make a strong covenant. But what will all of this take place in 70 weeks? 77s that's the numerical symbol employed by Gabriel which literally means 70 weeks of years in 490 years. This is why every Jew in the first century realized that Daniel's prophetic clock was running out. It was the 11th hour 490 years essentially had elapsed from the oracle that Gabriel gave to Daniel to the coming of the Messiah and the redemption of Jerusalem. And it's significant too then when we look at angel Gabriel, St. Gabriel's appearance to Zechariah and to the blessed virgin and the timetable that Luke gives us explicitly for when was it that Mary went to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth when she was in her sixth month? Now for Jews a month is 30 days and so what is six times 30, 180 days? At that same time, Gabriel appears to the blessed virgin with that second annunciation announcing that she will conceive and give birth to the son of the most high. And so nine months later she did so. But what is nine times 30, 270? So six months plus nine months. Six months 180? Nine months 270 plus 40 days when she goes up to be purified and to consecrate her Lord, her son in the presentation adds up to what? 490 days. What a coincidence. Pope Benedict didn't think so. And Father Laurentin and others have argued that this is a deliberate device used by the master of the sacred page, St. Luke who has contemplated the word just like our lady pondered it in her heart. So we are challenged to take this word into our hearts not to become Bible scholars but to become those who feast upon the bread of life, to become more like children of our lady, full of faith, full of hope and full of love. But there is one thing that she does in Luke two verse 22 that is also somewhat unexpected. She presents Jesus following the law. She consecrates him. Now this is not something that most Gentile readers notice but in fact Luke's narrative is quite odd. And again I wanna refer to you to my book Joy to the World because on page 130 I explain why it's odd. Luke describes Jesus not as being redeemed or purchased back by his parents as Exodus 13, 11 and 12 prescribed in Exodus 13 verse 13 but rather as being dedicated, consecrated, presented in the temple. And it is an important difference. The law did not require the presentation or consecration of every Israelite firstborn. The book of Exodus required that all firstborn sons be redeemed, be not only bought back but brought home. So what's going on here? Luke seemed to be portraying Jesus as a holy firstborn Israelite with some sort of natural priestly status. Because you'll recall that before the Levites got the priesthood in Exodus 32 who were the priests in ancient Israel? Who were the priests in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis? The patriarchs and their firstborn sons. Now beginning with Adam and moving on through Cain and Ishmael and Esau almost every firstborn fails in the patriarchal narratives. And so not surprisingly Israel fell short of its calling to be the firstborn nation. Go tell Pharaoh Israel is my firstborn son. But where was the failure of Israel manifest at the golden calf? And that's when the Levites married the priesthood and that's where the firstborn sons were disqualified. They were laicized. They desecrated themselves. In Exodus 13 right after the Passover in Exodus 12 all the firstborn belong to the Lord. In verses one and two they are to be consecrated. They are to be presented. But then in Exodus 13 just 10 verses later beginning in verses 11, 12 and 13 the Lord lets Moses in on a secret that he knows that Moses doesn't. That between now that you're coming out of Egypt and by the time you enter the Promised Land something is gonna change. Something bad is gonna happen. And at that point the firstborn males must be purchased, must be redeemed. They are not gonna be consecrated. They will in effect be desecrated and they're compared to an ass, a donkey. You can look at it in Exodus 13 or you can get joy to the world but Luke in fact records no redemption but rather a presentation. A consecration because this is the firstborn Israelite male to be holy. To basically remarit what all of the firstborn sons had de-married back at Sinai with the golden calf. And so the Levitical priesthood is seen by the fathers of the church like the rabbis as an interim measure. A kind of scaffolding that was put upon the face of Israel until a renovation could be complete. And so the last of the Levites is John and he anoints the firstborn of God the son of the most high. And so this is why he is consecrated as the firstborn as the son of the most high. There's more to it than I can go into but it's enough for us to see. There is gold in them on our hills. And what are the hills called? The Gospel of Luke. And what will it lead to? The depth of God's mercy. Take a closer look. I should have resisted that temptation. This is what it means for us to be in the year of mercy. This is what it means for us to ponder in our hearts the Gospel of mercy because the world thinks of mercy in a way that is quite different than what we believe as Catholics. Although I must admit, I think sometimes Catholics are prone to think of mercy just like the world. Why? Because most of the time when we hear the word mercy we think of it as being opposed to justice, right? That there's a kind of tug of war. A trade off between mercy to the extent that God is merciful he suspends justice. To the extent that he is just he is not showing us mercy. Well mercy in our tradition. Mercy in the scriptures is more than God being soft on sin. It's more than just divine leniency. A divine attitude of being lax and tolerant. No, God loves us too much to treat sin in that kind of soft way. This is not cheap grace. What I wanna propose to you is that mercy's gotta be understood in a twofold manner. As Aquinas points out we can speak of affective mercy. That is the attitude of divine compassion that God shows us when he sees us and our weakness and our misery. That's where the Latin word for mercy comes from, misery accordia. When God sees our misery it strikes his accordia, his heart. He'll stoop down no matter how low he has to go to find us in our own waywardness and our weakness and our wickedness and our wretchedness. But that's affective mercy. The other half of mercy is effective mercy where it's more than pity, it's power. It's more than God just stooping down to us and our weakness it's God raising us up by his own strength to be not only forgiven sinners but to become holy saints. This is what mercy is and this is why it is described as God's greatest attribute. Not because it's our favorite attribute. Holiness, you can hold back on that going down the cafeteria line. Justice, not so much. Oh mercy, pour it on, heap it on my plate. In fact, I've got two plates. No mercy is the coordination of all of God's attributes. What happens when you take his power, which is infinite and you link it to his knowledge, which is unlimited and then you tie that to his goodness and his love? What happens when God's almighty love is put into action? That's mercy. And so there's a marriage of mercy and justice. There is no tug of war. There is no divergence. There's a profound convergence and that's what we see at the cross. The cross is where mercy and justice kiss. It is the fruit of the marriage of divine justice and mercy because there at the cross we have the most supreme demonstration of justice to God on our behalf by the Son. And simultaneously you have the greatest display of mercy ever on God the Father's behalf through his Son to us as miserable sinners. The cross is the key that unlocks the mystery of mercy and justice to show us that God is our Father and the Father of mercies loves us too much to leave us in sin. He hates our sin precisely because he loves us. He punishes our sin precisely because he loves us. Were he to let us get away with sin? That would not be an expression of love. What but Paul describes as the wrath of God that is revealed when God gives us what we want instead of what we need. You can read all about that in the second half of Romans one. The mercy of God is when God displays his almighty love as only a perfect Father can do. And this is what the gospel is about. All four of them, but especially Luke's gospel. We know in the Sermon of the Plain there in Luke six, be merciful as your Father is merciful. Now that's the Luke and counterpart to what we read in Matthew five. Matthew's account of the Sermon of the Mount is be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Now if you had to choose between Luke six and Matthew five, which one would every one of us choose? Be merciful or be perfect? But again, it's not an either or it's a both and because what is the perfection of God? It's the perfection of a Father who loves us so much he'll stoop down to us in our misery and weakness. But it's also the perfection of a Father who is able to overcome our weakness. Give us all that we need make up for all that we lack and transform bread and wine into Christ even more transubstantiate sinners into saints. That's the work of divine mercy. And so when we hear Matthew say be perfect and Luke says be merciful, it's because the perfection of God's Fatherhood is his mercy. It's how he perfects sinners like me and you but it's also how he empowers us to extend mercy to other people and in the process become perfect like sons and daughters of God should be. Can you believe we got a little bit of a lifetime left to reflect upon these gospels and especially upon Luke? If we had started off at 12 years of age like Jesus in the next chapter, we would not have enough time to exhaust the inexhaustible riches of the gospel of Luke but heck we've got three days so let's make the best of it.