When I was working as a chaplain in a hospital I was talking to some of the nurses one day about Christmas and the topic of the Annunciation came up: that is, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and she conceived Jesus in her womb. One of them said, “It’s a nice idea. But it’s impossible!” I couldn’t help thinking, what does ‘impossible’ mean, when it comes to matters of faith. And in fact that is one of the things that the angel Gabriel said to Mary to help her to believe. ‘Your cousin Elizabeth in her old age, has herself conceived a son and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing will be impossible for God.’ (Lk 1:36-37)
In the Bible there are several people who were called ‘blessed’ because of their faith. Abraham was told that he would have a child and he believed, but he was 100 years old when it happened and his wife was in her nineties. By our way of thinking it couldn’t have happened, but he had faith and it did happen.
The angel Gabriel came to Zachariah, when he was performing his priestly duties and told him that his wife Elizabeth would conceive a son, even though she had been barren all her life and was now also an old woman. When the angel Gabriel told him this, he found it hard to believe and he questioned the angel. The angel Gabriel wasn’t impressed and said, ‘I am Gabriel who stand before God… Since you have not believed me, here is a sign for you. You will be struck dumb until the time comes for this to happen.’ (Lk 1:19-20). So even though he doubted, it still happened.
The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that she would have a child, but not by human means. She believed, even though she didn’t understand, and it happened. The angel reminded her that ‘nothing is impossible to God.’ All of these people and many others, were told to believe even though it didn’t make any sense to them and they did believe, without understanding. Elizabeth said to Mary, ‘Blessed is she who believed that the promises made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ I wonder would many of these things have happened if the people involved had refused to believe until they were sure, until they were able to know these things were true? They believed because God asked them to believe.
Today we are still asked to believe many things which we don’t understand. The temptation is to dismiss many of these things as being childish stories, just because they are not logical to us. But not understanding them is no reason to dismiss them. Why do many people dedicate themselves to a life of prayer locked up in a convent, or monastery, to a God that we cannot see? I don’t know, but they do.
How can we know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is really present in the Eucharist and that it’s not just a symbolic ritual? I could probably give you an impressive theological explanation for it, but it wouldn’t convince you. In fact it wouldn’t convince me either, because we can not understand many of these things, but we do believe them. That is the difference between faith and reason.
The truth is we can’t know these things, but we certainly do believe them. We believe them because God taught us these things through Jesus. And God continues to teach us many things through his Spirit, speaking to us through his Church, speaking to us through the Scriptures, speaking to us through modern day prophets.
There is a book and movie called The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. He was an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He and his wife Leslie were both staunch atheists. One evening when they were out for dinner, their daughter Alison starts choking on a piece of candy and she is in serious trouble. A nurse, called Alfie, comes to the rescue and saves Alison’s life. As Leslie is thanking her, Alfie says that it was God’s providence that she was there as she was not meant to be there that night. This catches Leslie’s interest and she begins to take an interest in Christianity. Long story short, she becomes a Christian. Her husband Lee is furious and he decides to set out on a campaign to prove that the case for Christ is a fraud.
He begins going to different experts in different areas to get proof. He talks to a psychologist asking him if it were possible that the Apostles were hypnotised into believing the resurrection. The psychologist says that would have been impossible. Then he goes to a physician to show that Jesus could have survived the crucifixion, but he also says that would have been impossible and hands him a copy of one of the major medical journals which has a whole article about it. The more research Lee does to disprove it, the more proof he gets of the reality. Finally one of his fellow journalists points out to him that he has more than enough proof to believe it was real, but that he is just being stubborn. Lee recognizes it and is also converted.
One of the more unpleasant tasks I have had as a priest was to stand up in front of the whole church after some of the horrific reports on child sexual abuse came out. I had my homily prepared, but I felt the Lord saying to me, ‘Just tell them why you are a priest.’ So I did just that and I said, ‘I have every reason to not be a priest when these scandals come out, but the reason I continue is because I believe. I believe that God is real, that heaven and hell are real, that the Eucharist is real, that the Scriptures are the word of God…’
Most of the events in the bible that we read about are real, although some are analogies. But these things really happened. They are not just stories.
As we come to celebrate the mystery of Christmas, and it certainly is a mystery, perhaps the best thing we could do is to say, ‘This is a very mysterious thing, which I don’t understand. But I believe it, because the Lord has made it known to us.’
‘Blessed is she who believed that the promises made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’
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