COMMENTARY: The first witnesses of Christ’s birth show how vigilance and humility lead the heart to recognize God’s saving presence.
Christmas has come, and now, in the light of Epiphany, its meaning continues to unfold. How do we allow the supernatural event that we celebrate to truly affect us? The shepherds and the magi, who were the closest human beings to the manger scene, can show us how.
On the night of Jesus’ birth, we are told that “there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock” (Luke 2:8). As they were keeping vigilant guard to keep their flock safe from robbers and wild animals, they received the message of a lifetime. It is in their deep watchfulness that God arrives — signaling to mankind that if we don’t pay close attention in prayer we can easily miss God when he comes.
At night, the shepherds fight against their dreariness and their desire for human rest because they are more concerned with protecting their livelihood: their sheep. As Christ is born among us at Christmas, we are called to keep our eyes on the supernatural realm over the worldly one as well. The appearance of the angels shows us that the veil between God’s inbreaking and our “ordinary” lives is extremely thin — all we must do is pay attention to the inbreaking to experience it.
The angel told the shepherds to rejoice: “For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:11-12).
The shepherds and the birth of Christ have a deep similarity. Both are extremely poor. The shepherds had no homes; Jesus had no place to rest his head. The shepherds were overlooked by the culture of the time; Jesus was not seen by the majority of the inhabitants of Bethlehem. It is this poverty, lowliness and hiddenness that connects Jesus to the shepherds. It is these characteristics that are required in order to see God as the shepherds did that night.
As Venerable Fulton Sheen said, “The world might have expected the Son of God to be born — if he was to be born at all — in an inn. A stable would be the last place in the world where one would have looked for him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.” If we seek to find God, all we must do is seek him out in the small circumstances of our lives.
The magi are mysterious characters. All we know about them is what we have in the Bible.
They only appear in Matthew’s Gospel. We know they “are from the east” (Matthew 2:1). We know that they were wealthy due to the gifts they could afford and the travel they could employ. We also know that they were probably some combination of philosophers and religious seekers, attentive to the movements of the stars and to the prophecy from Micah as evidence for where the Messiah would be born (Matthew 2:6).
After their unhelpful visit with Herod, the magi are determined to find this newborn King. We are told that “the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star” (Matthew 2:9-10).
St. Leo the Great says this joy of the magi ought to ring from our hearts:
Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness. No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all.
The excitement that they carried into their encounter with Jesus was extraordinary because they knew the importance of who they were meeting. The magi “on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11).
The Greek word for “prostrate” used here is pesontes. The literal translation of this word is “they fell on the ground.” To fall on their faces in front of this poor woman and man adoring their child could only mean that they simply knew the identity of the child. That is why they bring him gold for his kingship, frankincense for his divinity, and myrrh for the foreshadowing of his burial. They knew the proper stance in his presence was joy but also veneration.
As we celebrate Christmas and Epiphany, may we allow the witness of the shepherds’ vigilance and the magi’s joy to be our guide — so that we can truly be moved like they were to see how God enters into time to change us, save us, and make us the men and women we were meant to be.
