Luke 1:3 Scripture and the Authority of the Church. I. St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to write in order an account of our Lord's life and death, that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things in which he had been instructed; and this, as a general rule, might well d... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:5 Man's Extremity God's Opportunity. Reflect: I. On the low ebb to which the fortunes of the house of Israel were reduced at the period when St. John the Baptist was miraculously born. The very language in which the sacred books are written, had long ceased to be a spoken language. The nob... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:15 I. What makes people great in the sight of men? Several things do this; but birth, money, and talents are the chief things which give this kind of greatness. II. What makes people great in the sight of God? It is not any of the things which lead to greatness in man's sight. A person may b... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:17 Drawing Lightning. The wonderful suggestiveness of this passage is found in its theme. A wild threat, four hundred years old, is suddenly removed in a flash of benediction. The curse in Malachi is omitted in Luke the lightning is drawn. The Gospel fulfils the law when it accepts children... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:20 Unbelief and dumbness are as fountain and stream, cause and effect. It is written, observes Paul in his second letter to the Church at Corinth, "I believed, therefore have I spoken;" we also believe, and therefore speak. Faith opens the lips, unbelief closes them. There is a noisy unbelie... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:26 The purpose of this special embassy of the angel was to announce to the Virgin the exceptional and signal honour to which she had been selected as the mother of the Lord. Through this mysterious relationship she became the source and messenger of rest and holiday to a sin-scourged world.... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:26 The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I. "The angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth." Never was a time when, humanly speaking, the promises of God might seem so much to have failed: the house of David had departed from the sight of men, was unknown... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:35 The Mystery of the Holy Incarnation. I. There are beings within the mind's easy conception that far overpass the glories of the statesman and the monarch of our earth. Men of even no extreme ardour of fancy, when once instructed as to the vastness of our universe, have yearned to know of... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:38 The Call of God. It was the answer of profound and humble obedience to the greatest call ever addressed from heaven to a mortal creature. The call, sudden, undreamt of, overwhelming, interrupting in the most startling manner the daily course of an obscure human life, breaking in on its pr... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:46 I. How the Blessed Virgin was engaged when the Angel Gabriel came in unto her, with his famous words of heavenly salutation on his lips, we know not. We do but know that she was _within,_and we picture the maiden's astonishment to be so found out in her privacy; and so addressed, amid the... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:46 The Soul rejoicing in God. These words express: I. The satisfaction which man's reason experiences at contact with God. God satisfies some of the deepest yearnings of our intellectual nature. For instance, all men and women who think at all desire, if they can, to refer the various facts... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:46 The Reverence due to the Blessed Virgin. Note: I. The singular beauty and purity and steadiness of character which are manifested in those passages of St. Mary's life which come before us in the Gospels. (1) The first point I will mention is, the remarkable faith with which she received... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:53 I. When Mary announces the reward of spiritual hunger and the punishment of spiritual satisfaction with self, she touches upon a principle of very wide range, applicable to the needs of mental, of moral, of physical life. If a living being is to benefit by nourishment, whether in body, min... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:64 Dumbness removed by God. The subject suggested by these words is, praise of God the fruit of sight and of present enjoyment. We are not to rest our praises on that which was and on that which shall be, but we have abundant material in that which is now. I. Present reasons for praise: (1)... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:78 There are four things which always attend the dayspring's visit, or the coming of the morning; and when Jesus came into our world He brought these four things; and when He comes into our souls He brings them there too. I. The first thing that the visit of the dayspring brings with it is... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 1:78 Christ, the Ideal Man. Man needs a perfect ideal, an ideal that shall permanently defy criticism, a sample of what human goodness is in its truth and its completeness. We are sure we men that there is such a thing as this. How else, we ask, should there be so universal an aspiration towa... [ Continue Reading ]