Summoned to grace.

THE ESSENCE OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST was that it was an event for everybody, not just for the privileged few, the Virgin, and her saintly husband. Tradition has it that on the night of Christ's birth shepherds who were keeping watch over their sheep were suddenly accosted by a sky full of angels singing: "Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to those who do his will." It really is the most extraordinary epiphany in literature, a lavishing of heavenly music and rapture upon a handful of unsuspecting, illiterate Galileans. The shepherds (who at the time had a rather dubious reputation, tending to be poachers on the side) accepted the message, made their way to Bethlehem, and had the grace to see the small newborn as the great God the angels had announced.

The artist here does not portray matters so straightforwardly. Of the three shepherds, only one is alert to the angel. Several of his sheep, including the black one, have noticed the heavenly commotion as well. But the other two shepherds--summoned to grace along with the first and equally enveloped in unearthly light--are intent only on their own hanky-panky. If deafening choirs in the sky cannot catch their attention, there is small hope. The message, in other words, is always given, but not necessarily heeded.

From the book Sister Wendy's Nativity by SISTER WENDY BECKETT (first published by Loyola Press in association with HarperCollins Publishers and Rose Publishing). [C]1998 by Sister Wendy Beckett. Reprinted with permission from HarperCollins Publishers. Painting: The Annunciation to the Shepherds, pre-1550, Jacobus Coen attrib., Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Naples.