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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
It was the Lord who directed Augustus to give this edict, that he might minister unto the coming of the Only-begotten; for it was this edict that brought Christ's mother into her country as the prophets had foretold, namely, to Bethlehem of Judæa, according to the word, to a city of David, which is called Bethlehem.
Cyril of Alexandria
Christ therefore was born in Bethlehem at the time when Augustus Caesar gave orders that the first enrolment should be made. But what necessity was there, some one may perhaps say, for the very wise Evangelist to make special mention of this? Yes, I answer: it was both useful and necessary for him to mark the period when our Saviour was born: for it was said by the voice of the Patriarch: "The head shall not depart from Judah, nor a governor from his thighs until He come, for Whom it is laid up: and He is the expectation of the …
Theophylact of Ohrid
The census takes place so that, when everyone goes to his own homeland, the Virgin also came to Bethlehem, her own homeland, and thus the Lord was born in Bethlehem, and the prophecy was fulfilled. When the one God was about to put an end to polytheism, it was fitting that one ruler — Caesar — should also hold dominion.
Western Saints
Ambrose of Milan
He has rightly added the name of the governor, to mark the course of time. For if the names of the Consuls are affixed to the tables of prices, how much more ought the time to be noted down, of that event which was the redemption of all men? There is described a secular registration, implied a spiritual, to be laid before the King not of earth but of Heaven; a registering of faith: a census of souls. For the old census of the Synagogue was abolished, a new census of the Church was preparing. …
Gregory the Dialogist
What does it mean that the world is enrolled when the Lord is about to be born, except that this is openly shown: that he was coming in the flesh who would enroll his elect in eternity? Concerning the reprobate, by contrast, it is said through the Prophet: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and let them not be written with the just.
Bede
But this enrollment of the whole world that is recalled as having been done by an earthly king also clearly designates the works of the heavenly king. Undoubtedly the reason he appeared in the world was so that from all the countries throughout the world he might gather the elect into the unity of his faith, just as he himself promised that he would write down their names forever in heaven. …
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