#Jesus the shepherd images portable#

Roger Baxter in his Meditations sees Jesus, the good shepherd, as a fulfillment of a number of Old Testament passages, writing: 'This divine shepherd will visit you to-day, to feed you, and to defend you from the wolves of hell. He calls him by His grace, by His priests, and invites him to return once more to the fold, by means of the Sacrament of Penance.' Even as, during His sojourn on earth, He laboured for the conversion of sinners, so does He now go after the sinner. But the Saviour does not withdraw His love from this wanderer. The lost sheep signifies a sinner who, obeying his own evil inclinations and the allurements of sin, has separated himself from Jesus, and is shut out from the number of the faithful. 'The touching parable of the lost sheep shows our LordвЂ™s compassionate love for individual sinners. As Jesus 'foretold that the Gentiles also would believe in Him, and that all the faithful, both Jews and Gentiles, would be united in one fold, under one Shepherd.' 3) The Love of Jesus for sinners. As Jesus 'distinctly foretells His Sacrifice and Death in the words: 'I lay down My life for My sheep.'' 2) The one, united, catholic Church. 1) The Sacrifice and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Interpretation ДЄccording to German theologian Friedrich Justus Knecht a number of doctrines are put forward in this parable.

Images of the Good Shepherd often include a sheep on his shoulders, as in the Lukan version of the Parable of the Lost Sheep. However, by about the 5th century, the figure more often took on the appearance of the conventional depiction of Christ, as it had developed by this time, and was given a halo and rich robes, as on the apse mosaic in the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in Rome, or at Ravenna (right). Initially, it was probably not understood as a portrait of Jesus, but a symbol like others used in Early Christian art, and in some cases may also have represented the Shepherd of Hermas, a popular Christian literary work of the 2nd century. The image continued to be used in the centuries after Christianity was legalized in 313.

#Jesus the shepherd images portable#

The form of the image showing a young man carrying a lamb around his neck was directly borrowed from the much older pagan kriophoros (see below) and in the case of portable statuettes like the most famous one now in the Pio Cristiano Museum, Vatican City (right), it is impossible to say whether the image was originally created with the intention of having a Christian significance. The image of the Good Shepherd is the most common of the symbolic representations of Christ found in early Christian art in the Catacombs of Rome, before Christian imagery could be made explicit. John: 'Here Jesus' teaching contains no parables and but three allegories, the Synoptists present it as parabolic through and through.' John's Gospel' and according to the EncyclopГ¦dia Britannica article on Gospel of St. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Parables: 'There are no parables in St. Several authors such as Tinto, Barbara Reid, Arland Hultgren or Donald Griggs comment that 'parables are noticeably absent from the Gospel of John'.

I received this commandment from my Father.ДЄllegory of Christ as the Good Shepherd, 3rd century. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down by myself. Therefore the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. They will become one flock with one shepherd. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I know my own, and I'm known by my own even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. The hired hand flees because he is a hired hand, and doesn't care for the sheep. The wolf snatches the sheep, and scatters them. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who doesn't own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep, and flees. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. In the Gospel of John, Jesus states 'I am the good shepherd' in two verses, John 10:11 and 10:14.