Lux fulgebit hodie super nos – Today a light will shine upon us, for the Lord is born for us. This is the text for the Entrance Antiphon of today’s Mass. The ancient Gregorian Chant setting for this is in the noble Eighth mode. The Antiphon is a slightly adapted version of verses from Isaiah Chapter 9. The Oracle of Isaiah Chapter 9 is one of the strongest, most explicit, most exalted of all the Messianic Prophecies of the Old Testament. Anyone who knows Handel’s Messiah will be very familiar with the words. Handel starts with a Bass or Baritone solo: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Then the Chorus, in all its Baroque brilliance: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be call-ed: Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
Light shining in darkness; Christ our light; light today of glory, light of blessing, light of salvation. At the beginning of time, according to Genesis Chapter 1, God said: Let there be light! and there was light. And now again – today! - God intervenes, to do something entirely new. This is another great creative miracle: more wonderful, more astonishing even than the first. Now a new and greater light has driven back, shattered, overwhelmed the surrounding darkness. Our present wintry gloom is the best possible setting for our celebration of this new light. Darkness all about: the darkness of sin, the darkness of separation from God, the darkness of ignorance of divine things; the darkness of superstition, folly, and false belief; the darkness of a life lived without any ultimate hope; the darkness of death. But now Christ has come. He is divine light, inextinguishable light; the light of revelation, the light of truth, the light of hope, the light of holiness and of glory, the light of God among us, and God made manifest; the light of God reaching out to us and touching us in compassion and mercy; the light of God sharing with us his own marvellous light (cf. 1 Pt 2:9). He is the light of eternal brightness (cf. Is 60:19), and the light of life (cf. Jn 1:4). How to respond to all that? How to respond to Christ’s coming, his visitation, his birth into our world? The only sensible way is to sing, to dance for joy, to be truly grateful, and so far as we can, to share the good news and the grace we have received.
Last night at Midnight Mass we heard how the Angel visited a group of Shepherds at night, lighting up the darkness all around them with the glory of the Lord (Lk 2:8-9). Today’s Gospel tells of how these Shepherds visited the crib (v. 16). They told what they had seen and heard, and everyone was astonished. But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.
What did our Lady ponder then? I don’t think she can have shared the general astonishment at the message of the Shepherds. Today, the Angel had said to them, in the City of David a Saviour has been born: he is Christ, the Lord. Well, our Lady knew all that already. Similarly, I don’t think she would have been so surprised that Angels would come with heavenly messages. She’d already met one Angel; she knew all about the Angelic visitation to Zechariah in the Temple; so it must have seemed obvious to her that God would likely send more. But an annunciation to Shepherds? Now that was really astonishing! Or, frankly, odd. Why would God give his message to this bunch of nobodies? Shepherds occupied the bottom stratum of society in those times. We can presume these people were barely educated, scarcely respectable, and only just managing to survive on their tiny wage. Probably their average age also would have been very low: by and large Shepherds were mostly children.
Thinking of the Oracle of Isaiah Chapter 9, the contrast between the divine King with all those glorious Titles and these Shepherds could scarcely be more stark. Surely God should more reasonably have given his message to Kings and Governors, or at least to Priests or Scholars or Prophets? This was a message of universal salvation. So why give it to people with no power, no influence, no platform whatever?
And in the story there was no necessity for these Shepherds. They have no real function: unless simply to express and to share the overflowing abundance of joy that has come; to encourage and console our Lady and St. Joseph; to illustrate the purely gratuitous nature of God’s gift, God’s work, God’s goodness. I think all this must have been what Our Lady pondered, what she wondered at. That night, and all her life, she pondered, wondered at the mystery of how our redemption happened. Christ came not in power but in humility; not in strength but in weakness; not in broad daylight, but in the dark; not to the centre, but to the periphery; and he addressed himself not to those with influence, but only to the humble of heart.
Our Lady must have thought: this is all very odd. Why this way? Why the Shepherds? Why the stable? And above all: why me? And today it would do us good to take up that line of thought. Why has God done so much for me? Why has he humbled himself so low, in order to come to me, to save me, to lift me up? Of course simply because he is good, and his mercy has no end. With our Lady then we reflect on the great treasure given to us today; a treasure of infinite value put into our hands; infinitely beyond anything we could ever deserve. He is Jesus Christ our Lord. He is God incarnate. And he comes to me, for me. So with the Shepherds we adore him in quiet humility, and with the Angels also now we sing in exuberant joy with all our hearts: Glory to God in the highest! And on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased (Lk 2:14).