Driven by the brightness of the glory of God and the voice of the angel the shepherds went to Bethlehem and found there the one we now know as the Son of God.

The shepherds went back to work in boisterous good spirits, convinced something wonderful had happened and that the child they had seen was somebody very special. Mary, on the other hand, had to stay quietly with the child as she waited for his meaning to be progressively revealed to her.

After the pain that led to understanding she realised that in her child God, as the first reading put it, "had smiled on us." In Christ we had become God's sons and daughters.

A similar realisation can strengthen us to face the highs and lows of our lives and to make some sense of contrasts in life such as the exultant brightness of the festivities in Beijing to mark the 60th anniversary of People's Republic of China and the desolation of the earthquake in Sumatra, Indonesia and tsunami in Samoa.