One of the highlights of a pilgrimage I took to the Holy Land with grandparents from our archdiocese three years ago was to celebrate Sunday Mass in one of the caves outside of Bethlehem where the shepherds were watching their sheep on Christmas night.
Being in the Holy Land, in the places where the events of the Bible really occurred, makes our faith come alive. I encourage all Christians to go on such a pilgrimage. In this case, having been there makes even more meaningful the event depicted in the Gospel of Luke of an angel announcing to the shepherds “good news of great joy” (Lk. 2:10). The angel also instructed them not to fear, a common Biblical exhortation when people are about to receive their vocational call. I would suggest the shepherds’ call was to serve as a model for all Catholic Christians. A model later echoed in St. Mary Magdalene, “the Apostle to the Apostles,” when she was the first to encounter the risen Christ on Easter morning (Jn 20:1-18).
In the Gospel passage the Church designates for Christmas Mass at Dawn we hear what the shepherds did on that first Christmas morning. They: 1) responded to the angel’s invitation, 2) shared what they experienced during their encounter with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and 3) returned to their lives praising and glorifying God.
We are called to do the same as Catholics. We are invited, in fact instructed, on Christmas and on every Sunday (in addition to the invitation to come even more frequently: at daily Mass and/or eucharistic adoration) to encounter Jesus, present to us in the Eucharist. Vatican II tells us that when we gather for liturgy, Jesus is also present to us in the word of God proclaimed and preached, in our brothers and sisters in Christ, and in the priest (Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium 7). While during the Mass itself we may not have the opportunity to share how God is working in our lives, the shepherds remind us of the value in sharing our experiences of God with our brothers and sisters in Christ when we gather. Perhaps, we can share at coffee and donuts after Mass; perhaps, as we are walking to and from our car; perhaps, even as we join a small group, a feature of Christian life that will soon become more common in our archdiocese. Furthermore, like the shepherds, our sharing about God is not to end when we leave church; we are to take what we experienced and glorify God in our daily lives. By doing so, we can serve his proverbial angels, his messengers to others who may not know about Jesus, cognizant that Jesus came to save all people.
This dynamic has been true throughout history, but it takes on even more importance in our time, which some describe as a New Apostolic Age — a time when some, if not many, of the people we encounter in life do not know Jesus.
Last month, our shepherd, Archbishop Hebda, gave us a pre-Christmas gift: his post-synodal pastoral letter, “You Will Be My Witnesses” in which he invites us to be people of hope as we equip ourselves as individuals, and as parishes, to essentially, more effectively follow the example of the Bethlehem shepherds in our time. While not all of us can make it to the Holy Land this Christmas season, all of us can read his words that make living the Catholic life in our time come alive, so that someday we can enjoy together the glory that exceeds Christmas: the glory of eternity in heaven.
Merry Christmas!
Father Bambenek is the assistant director of the Archdiocesan Office of Synod Evangelization. He can be reached at bambenekj@archspm.org.
Sunday, Dec. 25
The Nativity of the Lord
