The Fourth Sunday of Easter
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”
This marble statue, standing almost one meter high, is considered to be one of the premier pieces of early Christian work in the Vatican museum. The shepherd was a popular subject for classical art and was used on sarcophagi, found in Roman gardens, and generally used to portray gentleness and peaceful rural life. As Christianity spread, these images of the shepherd began to be related to Jesus. Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, appeared in images found in the catacombs and, by the time of Constantine (313) when visual art began to play an important part in Christian life, Jesus, as shepherd, became a popular subject.
I am the Door of the Sheepfold - by Malcolm Guite
Not one that’s gently hinged or deftly hung,
Not like the ones you planed at Joseph’s place,
Not like the well-oiled openings that swung
So easily for Pilate’s practiced pace,
Not like the ones that closed in Mary’s face
From house to house in brimming Bethlehem,
Not like the one that no man may assail,
The dreadful curtain, The forbidding veil
That waits your breaking in Jerusalem.Not one you made but one you have become:
Load-bearing, balancing, a weighted beam
To bridge the gap, to bring us within reach
Of your high pasture. Calling us by name,
You lay your body down across the breach,
Yourself the door that opens into home.
For further facts on this statue see: https://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=2388&lang=en&action=show
For a video description of this work see: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/early-christian-art/early-christian-architecture/v/good-shepherd
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