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You know well that at the birth of our Lord, the shepherds heard the angelic and divine chants of the heavenly spirits. The scriptures say so. But they do not say that his Virgin Mother and St. Joseph, who were nearer to the Child, heard the voices of angels or saw those miracles of splendor. On the contrary, they heard the Child weeping and saw by the light of a poor lantern, the eyes of the Divine Child all bathed in tears, in sighs and shivering with cold. Now I ask you, would you not have preferred to have been in the dark stable, filled with the cries of the little Child, rather than to have been with the shepherds, beside yourself with joy over those sweet melodies from heaven and the beauties of this wonderful splendor?

— St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, quoted in Diane Allen, Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry: True Stories of Padre Pio, 2009, 293-294