Frist Sunday of Advent: Let Us Approach as Shepherds Did: Preparing in Advent with the First Witnesses of the King

Advent draws us into the quiet expectancy of a world longing for God, a world heavy with waiting and weariness, yet somehow still capable of hope. The season speaks gently: “Prepare the way of the Lord”—not merely as a slogan of spiritual discipline, but as an inner transformation, a turning of the heart toward the One who comes to us in unexpected ways. And there may be no better companions for this preparation than the unlikely figures who hurried through the night to Bethlehem: the shepherds.

Their story is retained mostly for Christmas liturgies, yet the seeds of their response—watchfulness, humility, obedience, wonder—are profoundly Advent virtues. Before the angels ever sang, before the manger became a shrine for the nations, the shepherds themselves lived in the posture that Advent seeks to awaken within us. If we can learn why God chose them first, we may understand what He desires of us as we approach the mystery of the Incarnation.

The Shepherds in the Hierarchy of Society: The Lowly Ones Chosen First

To appreciate the shock of their role in salvation history, we must understand who shepherds were in the world of first-century Judea. Far from the idyllic pastoral images on Christmas cards, shepherds occupied one of the lowest rungs of society. They were migrants, often sleeping outside the city walls, living by the rhythms of the flock rather than the rhythms of the Temple. Many were viewed with suspicion and were considered ritually unclean due to their constant contact with animals and their inability to maintain purity laws. Their testimony was not always accepted in court. They were, in a word, nobodies—those whom polite society tolerated but rarely honored.

And yet, God sought them out before anyone else.

Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, beautifully remarks that Luke’s Gospel intentionally fixes our attention on these humble men. God bypasses palaces and priestly courts. He does not summon the scholars or the Sanhedrin. Instead, He chooses those on the margins—those not invited to Bethlehem’s houses—to be the first invited to Bethlehem’s Child. This is consistent with the biblical pattern that God “lifts up the lowly” and “fills the hungry with good things” (Lk 1:52–53), echoing Mary’s Magnificat sung only a chapter earlier.

The shepherds therefore stand as a living proclamation of a truth at the heart of Advent: God comes to the poor, the small, the watchful, the forgotten. He comes to those who know they need Him.

Why Shepherds? The Theological Significance of the First Witnesses

The Fathers of the Church saw profound symbolism in God choosing shepherds as the first to behold the newborn King.

St. Gregory the Great notes that shepherds represent the simple and the contemplative—those who labor in obscurity while keeping their hearts attentive to God. They are vigilant by necessity, awake in the darkness. In an age where spiritual sleep comes easily, Advent invites us back into that same wakefulness.

St. Ambrose taught that the shepherds prefigure the apostles, the future shepherds of Christ’s flock. Before the Church receives her mandate to proclaim the Gospel, God first trains our eyes on these earlier shepherds who run to meet the Shepherd of Souls. The newborn King is revealed first not to the powerful, but to those who will one day image His pastoral care.

And St. John Chrysostom emphasized that the shepherds model the right response to divine revelation: they hear, believe, go, and adore. They respond “with haste” (Lk 2:16), a phrase that pulses with Advent urgency. Salvation has come; delay is no longer fitting.

Pope Francis has repeatedly returned to this theme in his preaching: God draws near first to those who are “on the peripheries”—the spiritually bruised, the socially invisible, the materially or morally poor. The shepherds are an announcement that God’s Kingdom overturns human hierarchies. Christmas is not sentimental; it is revolutionary grace. Advent, therefore, trains us to expect God where the world least expects Him.

Shepherd-Like Preparation: How We Approach the Newborn King Today

The shepherds teach us not only about God’s preference for the humble but also about the disposition required to see Him. Their preparation was not a strategy or a program. It was the posture of their life.

They were watchful—they stayed awake while others slept. Advent calls us to that same vigilance. The Church’s ancient prayer—“Drop down dew, O heavens”—expresses this yearning for God that should mark our hearts. To approach as shepherds did means cultivating alertness to God’s movements even in the night of our lives.

They were poor in spirit, detached from status and self-importance. The Catechism reminds us, “The Lord is close to the humble” (CCC 2546). The shepherds embody that poverty which makes room for grace. Advent invites us to strip away the illusions of self-sufficiency, to recognize again that God alone is our Savior.

They were obedient. Upon hearing the angel’s message, they made no excuses, asked no proofs. “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem” (Lk 2:15). Their obedience flows from trust, and trust is the virtue that Advent stretches within us. To prepare like them is to say with Mary, “Let it be to me according to your word.”

They were joyful. They returned “glorifying and praising God” (Lk 2:20). In doing so, they become the first evangelists of the Incarnation. Advent joy is not premature Christmas cheer; it is the deep assurance that God is at work, even when hidden.

Seeing the Newborn King in Our Daily Lives

The shepherds saw a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes—nothing outwardly spectacular. But they saw with the eyes of faith what others did not perceive. So it is for us.

Christ comes quietly—
in the Eucharist, where His glory is veiled;
in the poor, where His face is disguised;
in the daily duties we did not choose;
in the interruptions that call us beyond ourselves;
in the quiet whispers of conscience;
in the moments of grace that flicker like starlight in the midst of our night.

Approaching like shepherds means approaching in humility, with alert hearts, able to recognize Emmanuel—God-with-us—in all the subtle ways He arrives. As St. Teresa of Calcutta often said, “Behold Him in His distressing disguise.” The shepherds teach us to expect God in simplicity, littleness, and poverty, for this is where He first revealed Himself to the world.

Advent as the Way to Bethlehem

The road from the fields to the manger is the road of Advent itself. It is the journey from darkness into light, from fear into trust, from longing into joy. The shepherds walked that path in the cold night, guided only by the message of angels and the stirring of their hearts. We, too, walk by faith, guided by Scripture, the liturgy, the sacraments, and the teaching tradition handed down by the Church.

St. Augustine wrote that “our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” The shepherds’ journey is the visible form of that restlessness—a holy restlessness that Advent seeks to awaken in us. It is the restlessness that stands up in the middle of the night and says:
“Let us go to Bethlehem. Let us see this Word that has come to pass.”

And there, in the Most Unexpected Place, they found Him.

We will, too, if we let Advent shape our hearts to look for Him where the world does not.

Advent as the Way to Bethlehem—and the Way to Calvary and the Empty Tomb

The journey of the shepherds does not end at the manger; in fact, the dynamics revealed in their encounter with the newborn Christ foreshadow His entire mission—from the first miracle at Cana to the final victory of Easter morning. Advent invites us not only to approach Bethlehem but to understand that Bethlehem itself points forward to everything Christ will accomplish.

The watchfulness of the shepherds prefigures the watchfulness Christ later asks of His disciples in Gethsemane: “Remain here and keep watch with Me.” The One whom they found sleeping in a manger would one day plead with His closest friends to stay awake in the hour of His agony. Their vigil in the fields becomes an early whisper of the Christian call to “watch and pray,” a vigilance that sustains us through trial, suffering, and spiritual battle.

Their poverty of spirit, which made them receptive to the angelic message, anticipates Christ’s first great sign at Cana—where He responds not to the wealthy or powerful but to the humble plea of His mother and the quiet need of an ordinary family. The God who revealed Himself to shepherds continues to reveal Himself through simplicity and humility. It is the lowly who perceive His glory first; it is the poor in spirit who recognize the wine of grace where others see only empty jars.

The obedience of the shepherds—leaving at once to seek the Child—foreshadows Christ’s own obedience to the Father, an obedience that carried Him from Nazareth to the Jordan, from the desert to the Cross. Their readiness anticipates the total self-gift of the Savior who “became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Just as the shepherds’ obedience brought them to the Lamb of God in the manger, Christ’s obedience reveals Him as the Lamb slain for the salvation of the world.

Their joy—so natural, so uncontained—lights the first spark of the Easter proclamation. For the joy they carried back to their fields is the same joy the disciples will carry from the empty tomb. It is the joy of hearts who have encountered the living God, the joy of knowing that God has kept His promises. The shepherds’ praise anticipates the Church’s unending Alleluia, the exaltation that rises from every Easter Vigil when darkness breaks before the light of the Resurrection.

Thus, the shepherds stand not only at the dawn of Christ’s earthly life but at the threshold of His entire redemptive mission. The simplicity of Bethlehem already contains the seeds of Calvary and the glory of the Resurrection. The Child wrapped in swaddling clothes will one day be wrapped in burial cloths, and yet He will leave them behind in triumph. The wood of the manger prefigures the wood of the Cross. The first adorers in Bethlehem mirror the future witnesses at the empty tomb. Everything begins here, with men who came in the night and left transformed by Light.

And so, when we approach Advent like the shepherds—watchful, humble, obedient, and joyful—we enter not only the mystery of Christmas but the whole mystery of our redemption. We are drawn from the manger to the miracles, from the Jordan to the mountain, from the Cross to the bursting radiance of Easter morning. Advent is not merely preparation for a day; it is preparation for a Person—for the Christ whose mission unfolds in love from His first breath to His final triumph.

To approach as shepherds did is to let Bethlehem shape our gaze so that we might see the whole arc of salvation held within that fragile Child. It is to let our hearts be awakened—so that when Christ passes by us in daily life, in sacrament, in suffering, and in glory, we may recognize Him and proclaim as they did:
“Let us go to Bethlehem. Let us see this Word that has come to pass.”

God Bless