[T]hrough the figure of the shepherd the early Church could identify with existing models of Roman art. There the shepherd was generally an expression of the dream of a tranquil and simple life, for which the people, amid the confusion of the big cities, felt a certain longing. Now the image was read as part of a new scenario which gave it a deeper content: “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want ... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me ...” (Ps 23 [22]:1, 4). The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through. The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his “rod and his staff comforts me”, so that “I fear no evil” (cf. Ps 23 [22]:4)—this was the new “hope” that arose over the life of believers.
And he who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
Search This Blog
Benedict XVI - The Good Shepherd accompanies us in death
Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007), 45-46
-
The supernatural dignity of one who has been baptized rests, we know, on the natural dignity of man, though it surpasses it in an infinite m...
-
To all of you who are visited by suffering under a thousand forms, the Second Vatican Council has a very special message. It feels on itself...
-
Humanly speaking, the Lord is astounding because he displays a purely divine quality—that of being at once wholly universal and wholly concr...
Benedict XVI - The Good Shepherd accompanies us in death
[T]hrough the figure of the shepherd the early Church could identify with existing models of Roman art. There the shepherd was generally an ...