In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

During this Christmas season of twelve days, beloved in the Lord, much of our attention is directed and should be directed toward the stars. The visitors to the newborn Jesus were star-gazers: the shepherds and the astronomers, those are the two groups that are named. Two kinds of star-gazing: the contemplative and the scientific. The first produced poetry and rhetoric, and the second produced measurement and therefore scientific inquiry, geometry, and geography.

Now, examine that and you see, I think, the traditional division of the academy into the arts and sciences. Combined, these two pursuits give us that most complete pursuit of all: historiography. Historiography is the organization of memory, and the organization of memory is what infers human consciousness, the organization of memory. Now the Holy Spirit, by a mysterious process we call inspiration, took possession of this manifold pursuit and gave us a body of literature known as the Bible. All of this comes from our regard of the stars. Without those beautiful lights that shine above us, there would be no art, no science. There would be no history, because we would be unable to measure time. We would forfeit nine-tenths of our poetry and all of our music.

We know that Adam slept—we are told that. At least on one occasion, he slept. [Laughter] But he must also have stayed up on some nights and watched the stars. It was from the study of the stars that he learned the structure of his soul. One of Adam’s descendents summarized, I think, the experience of Adam:

Ki ereh shameka, ma’ashe etsbeoteka, yareah wekokabim, asher konaneta. I behold thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the stars which thou hast fashioned. And beholding these things I can but inquire: What is man that thou shouldst visit him? Or Adam’s son, that thou shouldst care for him?

Now this is the question posed to the human race for the twelve days’ festival of Christmas:

Ma henosh ki tidzkerennu? Uben Adam ki tipkekadenu? What is that man that thou dost be mindful of him? Or Adam’s son, that thou shouldst care for him?

That singular event of the birth of the Lord is that by which we divide history into before and after.

Well this morning, sweet people, I want to speak of the responsibility—a responsibility—imposed upon us by the Gospel itself. This is one responsibility imposed upon us by the Gospel itself. And that is the cultivation of the devout mind. If we are to be disciples of Christ our Lord, the cultivation of the devout mind is not optional, for he commands us to love God with our whole mind—our whole mind, with all the functions of our mind, with all the activities to which the mind is geared and for which it is designed. That includes memory, reflective thought, contemplative analysis. The cultivation of a devout mind. He has commanded us to love God with our whole mind. This is why all Christians must be intellectuals. I will not allow the word “intellectual” be grabbed by an elite.

This morning I want to consider with you three models of the devout mind: first of all, the local shepherds; the astronomers come from afar; and the Mother of Jesus, who held in her arms and nourished at her breasts the Savior of the world.

Let’s talk first about the shepherds, the local shepherds. What were these men doing that night? Well, they had the midnight shift. They were working. Most of them were probably asleep, but they were taking their turns. They were keeping watch. They were working, then, when the angels arrived in the field, and the angels for the first time sang the great doxology. These shepherds were working. They were supporting themselves and their families. But their work involved some periods of relative leisure, because sheep also are obliged to sleep, take their rest.

So what does the watch mean in the fields? What does that watch mean? The sheep are asleep, you know. Are they going to wake up and eat, if the sheep are asleep? Keeping watch over their flocks means protecting them from wolves and coyotes, and they were keeping this watch by turns under the vast expanse of the Syrian sky. I believe that vast expanse of the Syrian sky is surely the source of the most fundamental of Syrian philosophies, which is Stoicism, because Stoicism, even though the Greek gives us the name, the thing comes from the Syrians. Greeks learned their Stoicism prior to the Stoa; they learned it from the Syrians.

Now these were practical men who exercised stewardship over their resources. They inherited this skill that derived from the first days of human existence. Shepherding was a profession that traced its origins back to Abel. The shepherds represent the practical life, the active life, based on the arts of survival. This is an important context for the devout mind, a mind that maintains devotion in the midst of an active life.

When I speak about the devout mind, I’m really not talking about monasteries at all, although I hope there’s devout minds in monasteries as well. But the tradition we’ve inherited from the Desert Fathers says that monks themselves must feed themselves, so that labor is an essential part of monastic life, because it’s active. Certainly in Europe you can hardly think of any economics before the Reformation without the monasteries. Even the most solitary hermit, according to the sayings of the Desert Fathers, better do something. He’d better grow some vegetables; he’d better weave some baskets for the market. In other words, you’re never freed from participation in the economic life of the world, not even the monk, and certainly not the rest of us; we’re not freed from engaging in the economic life of the world. So this economic life of the world is an important context of the devout mind, a mind that maintains devotion in the midst of an active life.

Second, let’s talk about the magi, the astronomers. These are the men of science, academic men. Their form of life depends on the work of shepherds. You can’t have scientists unless you have shepherds and farmers and fishermen. The academy is based on an economic foundation. There’s no academy without the economy to sustain it. The very existence of scholars depends on the very existence of other people. The very word for “school” is “schole,” isn’t it? The root is “schole,” a Greek word meaning “leisure.” We set aside a long period of leisure so people have the time to study. We give them lots of leisure. We don’t expect them to do anything else, just study, because when your studies are over, we’re going to put you to work.

That leisure is extremely important. It’s a good thing that college students have time on their hands, because there’s a library there. That’s why they have time on their hands, because there’s a library, where they’re supposed to go and study the classical texts that form our civilization. They’re not supposed to be studying new ideas; they’re supposed to be studying the classical texts which form our civilization.

But the whole story of the magi testifies that these, too, were devout men, who studied, learned from the Christ. They studied. They were not astrologers; they were astronomers. They were scientists. If they had not been following the star to Christ, suggests the antiphon of the day, they would have been worshiping stars. You see, if the academy fails to cultivate the devout mind, the only thing you should do to it is burn it down, destroy all campuses. If they’re not cultivating the [devout] mind, they have absolutely no raison d’etre, because the academy that does not cultivate the [devout] mind becomes demonic and idolatrous.

The greater leisure required by academic existence means that a fall from grace becomes a heavier fall. It’s pretty sad when those of us engaged in the economic life, and making a living, become distracted and don’t have a devout mind, and then we get eaten up by economic concerns, don’t we. Money becomes money and prosperity, become idols. How much worse when ideas become idols! So it’s important to recall that the Christian, the Christian faith, did in fact give rise to the university. That’s where it came from. The university was founded in the cultivation of the devout mind, and that’s why traditionally the highest study done in the university was theology. You want a little more ample presentation of that, I can recommend the reading of John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University.

See, without that faith, where would the magi be? Where would the magi go? They would go to idolatry. That’s the academic mind, the scientific mind, the pursuit of ideas. If it does not lead to Christ, the ideas themselves become harmful.

And third and last this morning, let’s talk about the Mother of Jesus. In the Mother of Jesus, we see the custody of salvific memory. Luke twice tells us that she kept all of these things, pondering them in heart. I see the Virgin Mary in the 102 psalm: “Bless the Lord, O my soul. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Forget not all his benefits.” What’s the first activity of the soul? Memory! Memory. There’s no such thing as thought without memory. “Forget not,” that’s the first thing. From memory we are fed with imagination, thought, intellect, and from time to time even the exercise of reason, although we don’t want to overdo that one. But memory—Mary kept all of these things, pondering them in her heart.

What are these memories? These are the salvific events of her own life: the Annunciation of the birth of her son, her visit to Elizabeth, the Birth of Jesus, the Presentation in the Temple. Thirty years of actually raising the Savior of the world and preparing him for the three years in which he would, in fact, save the world.

The Mother of Jesus most perfectly presents the cultivation of the devout mind. We speak of her as a contemplative, and that’s surely true. It’s extremely unlikely that she could read and write, though. She was a worker. She took part in work. She had things to do. But taking part in the economic life and the ordinary life of ordinary people, she becomes the model of those who live for God, contemplate God, love God, and receive his Son. Amen.