Luke 2:18

And all who heard were amazed at what was spoken to them by the shepherds. By the shepherds, the people are driven to the reverence of God. Do not consider this example of faith to be trivial, nor the person of the shepherds to be insignificant. Certainly, the less they are esteemed for their prudence, the more precious they are for their faith. The Lord chose not the wise but the simple, who would not know how to embellish what they heard, to be His heralds; He appointed fishermen, not orators, to evangelize. Indeed, even in the Old Testament, He ordained shepherds as the primary messengers of His dispensation. The first martyr Abel, who dedicated the innocent conduct of his pastoral duty with his own blood and whose blood, in the figure of the Lord's passion, cries out from the ground, offered the first fruits of his flock to the Lord as a devoted shepherd. Abraham, the father of faith, who rejoiced to see the day of Christ and saw it and was glad, is described not as seeking gold mines to obtain ornaments for his worship but as digging to find water sources to water his flocks. Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, was tormented by heat and frost for twenty years while tending the flocks, a figure of the true shepherd who, with the variety of his virtues shown between the waters of salvific doctrine, was elevated to a higher state. Moses, the lawgiver, who first, as a type of the sevenfold Church, defended seven sisters who were pasturing from the outrage of the shepherds until they could water their flock, and later, in the pastures of the desert, earned the privilege of seeing and speaking with the Lord, performing signs with the pastoral staff, and liberating God's people. David himself, whom our Lord deigned to be called and to be the son of, by rescuing his father's ram from the hand of the bear or the lion, showed that from his stock and city the one would be born who, unrivaled, would rescue the poor from the hand of the stronger one, and the needy and poor from those who prey upon them. Therefore, the witness of the shepherds should not be considered of little value, who then were worthy not only to see but also to hear the hymn of angelic exultation, when, leaving the ninety-nine sheep in the desert, the Good Shepherd appeared to seek the hundredth sheep. The whole flock of the faithful, always longing for His coming, implores: I have gone…