Luke 2:20

Luke 2:20. Returned, i.e., to their flock, to their duty. Angelic revelations did not make them unfaithful shepherds. But their ordinary duty was made glad by what they had heard and seen. We hear no more of them. Van Oosterzee: ‘They probably fell asleep, before the beginning of our Lord's public ministry, with the recollection of this night in their hearts, and a frame of mind like that of the aged Simeon. Their names, unknown on earth, are written in heaven, and their experience is the best example of the first beatitude. Matthew 5:3.'

Lessons from the Nativity: God has in every birth His admirable work. But God to be a child, that is the miracle of miracles. The great God to be a little babe ; the Ancient of Days to become an infant; the King of eternity to be two or three months old, the Almighty Jehovah to be a weak man; God immeasurably great, whom heaven and earth cannot contain, to be a babe a span long; He that rules the stars to suck a woman's nipple; the founder of the heavens rocked in a cradle; the swayer of the world swathed in infant bands: it is a most incredible thing, the blessed ‘mystery' of godliness. The earth wondered, at Christ's Nativity, to see a new star in heaven; but heaven might rather wonder to see a new Sun on earth. Glory and shame, the highest heavens and the lowly manger, angels and shepherds, how much in keeping with the birth of the God-man, God emptying Himself to become man! If it be poetry and not history, then the poet would be greater than the hero (Rousseau). This fact called for angels' highest strains, and ever since has been stimulating the ‘men of God's good pleasure' to voice their thanksgiving for ‘peace on earth,' in a way not discordant with that song of the future, in which angels and redeemed men shall unite to praise the Babe of Bethlehem, to sing the eternal Gloria in Excelsis.