Many people wondered what Christ looked like, and we still wonder, because there were no photographers then like there are today, nor photographic cameras, nor painters like there are today, to paint Him. However, there is one wonderful testimony about Him and His miraculous character, which was written down by the Holy prophet David.

Holy Tradition says that when prophet David was a shepherd, when he was tending sheep in the fields of Bethlehem, there was once a great heat, so he hid in a cave to protect himself from the heat. And there, the tired child fell asleep. And while sleeping, he felt a terrible danger, he felt that something was squeezing him, constantly squeezing him! And the child woke up from that pressure and had something to see: a dangerous and poisonous snake had wrapped itself around him, around his entire body. And just when the snake was about to bite his face David, terrified by the horror he encountered, cried out: “Lord, save me!” And at that moment, Tradition says, a Child of indescribable beauty appeared! And the whole cave was filled with an indescribable light, light that turned that poisonous and vicious snake into dust and ashes and saved David! 

When king David later became king and prophet, he wrote the following words in his psalm: “You are fairer than the sons of men; Grace is poured upon Your lips“. And the interpreters say that he wrote it down remembering that Child that shone in front of him in the cave in Bethlehem, in which that Child was later born… And with those words he described the appearance of Christ, that Christ is the most beautiful among all the sons of men. There is no man, no poet, no writer, no painter who could describe His image!

Excerpt from a sermon of metropolitan Amfilohije Radovic, Palm Sunday, 2009