The day is Christmas. The era is ancient. The tiny farming village is located 50 miles from the big city, deep within the Apennine foothills.

A young shepherd is guiding a flock of sheep down mainstreet. He’s talking to the sheep like they are people.

The young man’s name is Frank. People think Frank has lost his mind.

Frank loves animals deeply. Locals know that Frank raises these sheep not to harvest their wool, not to slaughter them. He raises them because he loves them. He’s named each one. They say he even sleeps with them.

“What’s he doing with all those sheep?” says one guy in the tavern.

“Beats me.”

“That guy’s nuts,” says a man sipping his ale.

Frank is bundled tightly in a cloak as he walks through the village barefoot alongside his woolen brothers.

The weather is unusually cold this year. With lows dipping into the 20s. There is snow gathering atop the muddy huts and thatch rooftops of earthen homes and crumbling rock buildings.

Frank looks at the homes lining the small street, dotting the countryside. The inhabitants of these homes are poor. Very poor. Often, with barely enough to eat. There have been reports of local children so hungry they eat mud.

The line between farmer and fortune has never been so inordinately clear in this isolated farm town, far away from the universe of the genteel.

Today, however, the small town does not seem so isolated. Today, the town is bustling with visitors.

In fact, there are crowds gathering in the streets of Greccio. People have come from far and wide to see what Frank has done. Frank has created something, living art, and word about it has spread all over the countryside.

These visitors are mostly farmers. You can tell because they are all wearing rags. Some have traveled hundreds of miles to be here. On foot. Through the snow. Most aren’t even wearing shoes. But they’re here. That’s how important this is to them.

“Where is it?” shouts someone in the crowd.

Frank motions to his audience. “This way!” he shouts. “Follow me!”

The pilgrims follow Frank through the snow-covered countryside, en masse. The sheep are leading the way, bleating, singing, and creating beautifully organic smells upwind.

Finally, the group arrives at a cave. There is a campfire in the cave, lighting the cavern from the inside, with smoke billowing out of the mountain crevice.

The young shepherd leads them to the cave. The farmers all gasp, for there is a baby inside.

Alongside the baby is his little family. A mom, a dad, and their screaming infant. The baby is wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a feed trough. Father and Mother are huddled near the child to keep him warm.

Also, there are oxen in this caveside stable. There are donkeys, sheep, goats, pigs, and even some geese.

The visitors are touched by the primitive conditions in which the infant is born. Not because the conditions are horrific, but because this cave is not unlike their own homes.

Nobody knew He had been born like this.

The visitors have all heard how baby Jesus was born in days of old, of course. But the priests always tell the birth story in Latin. And usually, the clergymen are dressed in gilded silk and velvet robes when they tell the tale.

The basilica stained glass windows often depict Jesus as a rich man, dressed in colorful cloaks. A powerful conqueror. Complete with a resplendent halo around His head.

But this…

This was so real. This was so raw. This babe, wrapped in burlap, lying amidst bits of hog slop. This infant, born only inches away from a fetid pile of bull you-know-what.

This living reenactment had never been done before. People had never seen images of this scene before. Not in the year 1223.

But Frank’s message was clear. Visitors began to weep. Many took to their knees and started praying. Others held their own children tightly. They had never seen anything so lovingly painful before. It was the first of its kind.

Well, actually. It was the second of its kind.

“What do you call this?” one little girl asked the shepherd. There were tears in her eyes.

“I call it, ‘presepe vivente,’” said Saint Francis. “A Nativity scene.”