During this season of Advent, we would like to share some short stories, scripture and essays with you over the coming weeks regarding Jesus’s birth and the indescribable gift we have been blessed with should we chose to accept it. Today we are presenting a short “The Shepard’s Field” by Jean-Baptiste-Henri Lacordaire.

The field of the shepherd’s is still there; flocks freed in the winter under the olives, as in the days of Jesus, in the field where the grass still grows green, and the anemones flower. Worship has never left the place where shone the brightness of the birthday dawn of Christ. On Christmas evening the people of Bethlehem flock to the church of St. Helena, of which only the ruins remain, and in its desolate crypt they pray to the shepherds Beir-Saour, their ancestors, who were the first apostles. Clad in their long white veils, seated in groups on the broken walls, beneath the shade of the circling olives, the women, seen from afar, recall the mysterious beings who heralded the advent of Jesus. They crowd has an aid of cheerfulness and calm, which harmonizes well with the memories of which the plain is full; and with that Eastern light which colors the whole and gives to the sterile rock itself an appearance of richness and of life.