Christian Art | A Boy At Prayer With Jesus The Good Shepherd
Office Of Readings | Eastertide Week 4, Sunday | A Reading From The Homilies Of Pope Saint Gregory The Great On The Gospels | Jesus Christ The Good Shepherd
‘Jesus Christ the good shepherd.’
Jesus Christ The Good Shepherd | A Commentary On Saint Gregory The Great’s Homily
Saint Gregory the Great’s homily on Christ as the Good Shepherd, taken from the Gospel of John, is a deeply pastoral and theological reflection rooted in both personal experience and the challenges of his time. In unpacking this text, Gregory speaks not only as a biblical interpreter but as a pope with a profound concern for the souls of his people — both lay and ordained. His reflections continue to resonate in Christian thought, especially on what has come to be known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.
The Good Shepherd | Knowledge As Love
Gregory begins by reflecting on Christ’s words: ‘I am the good shepherd. I know my own – by which I mean, I love them – and my own know me.’ For Gregory, the verb ‘to know’ does not refer to abstract knowledge or doctrinal familiarity. It signifies love — an active, faithful relationship. Knowing Jesus Christ is not simply believing certain truths about Jesus; it is being bound to Jesus in a way that transforms life and behaviour. Gregory emphasizes that the test of this knowledge is action, echoing the First Letter of John: ‘Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not keep his commandments, is a liar.’
This idea — that knowledge of God is tested by love and obedience — is central to Gregory’s pastoral theology. For both shepherds (pastors) and sheep (the faithful), knowledge of Christ must be revealed in concrete commitment. Gregory, who wrote extensively on the duties of bishops in his Regula Pastoralis (Pastoral Rule), applies this double test equally. The bishop, as shepherd, must lay down his life for the flock not only metaphorically but through tireless service, self-sacrifice, and moral example. The sheep, in turn, must respond in faith and imitation of Christ.
The Cross And Love | Knowing Through Sacrifice
Gregory highlights Christ’s own words: ‘I lay down my life for my sheep.’ This is not merely a statement about Jesus’ death but a definition of divine love. Christ’s death is the fullest revelation of his knowledge of, and union with, the Father. Gregory’s logic is that love reveals knowledge. Christ’s self-gift shows not only his love for humanity but his perfect unity with the Father — since the Father’s will is love and mercy. Therefore, the one who follows Christ must also be shaped by this sacrificial love.
In this, Gregory is pointing to the pastoral and moral demands placed upon Christians. A shepherd who seeks only prestige or comfort, or a Christian who follows Christ only in words but not in action, has not yet ‘known’ the Good Shepherd. True discipleship must be marked by humility, endurance, and the willingness to lose one’s life for others.
From Faith To Vision | The Journey Of The Sheep
Drawing on another passage from John’s Gospel, Gregory turns to the movement of the sheep: ‘If anyone enters the sheepfold through me he shall be saved; he shall go freely in and out and shall find good pasture.’ Gregory interprets this in spiritual terms: the sheep (the Christian) moves ‘from faith to vision, from belief to contemplation’. The good pastures are not earthly comforts but the ‘spiritual joys of heaven’, the full vision of God’s face.
This is a classic formulation of Christian pilgrimage. Earthly life is the journey through faith, often obscured and marked by struggle. Heaven is the pasture of clarity, where vision replaces belief. This line draws from the Christian tradition of the via — the way of life — culminating in the beatific vision, the ultimate end of humanity.
Gregory’s shepherd imagery here connects deeply with the spiritual hunger of the faithful. The sheep seek green pastures not simply to graze, but to dwell forever in the presence of God. The Eucharistic overtones may also be present: Christ, the Good Shepherd, feeds his sheep even now, but their ultimate nourishment is the eternal feast.
The Pilgrim Church | Joyful Urgency
The final paragraphs are a summons to perseverance. Gregory urges the faithful to look ahead to the ‘grazing ground’ of heaven, where the saints — ‘fellow citizens’ — already rejoice. He acknowledges life’s obstacles but exhorts believers not to be deterred by them. His words are pastoral, not romantic. Life is a difficult road. Yet even its difficulties, if navigated with eyes on the goal, can lead to joy.
Here Gregory is perhaps most personal. As pope during times of political chaos, famine, and plague, he understood suffering. He had given up the monastic life he loved for the burden of the papacy — reluctantly, but with a profound sense of duty. This context gives his words weight. He knew the ‘rough road’ well. He also knew that worldly success can be just as dangerous as persecution — likening it to a pleasant meadow that distracts the traveller.
Thus, the Christian journey is one of alertness, desire, and endurance. To ‘love thus is to be already on our way,’ he says — a line that echoes Augustine’s teaching that our desire for God is itself the beginning of heaven.
Glossary Of Terms
- Sheepfold: A pen or enclosure for sheep. In Christian imagery, it refers to the Church or the community of salvation under Christ.
- Contemplation: A form of spiritual vision or deep union with God that transcends discursive thought.
- Beatific Vision (implied): The direct, unmediated seeing of God as He is in heaven, the ultimate goal of Christian life.
- Pasture: While literal in agricultural language, here it symbolizes spiritual nourishment and eternal joy.
- Holocausts (in broader Christian texts): Sacrifices that are entirely burned on the altar; symbolizes complete self-gift to God.
A Reading From The Homilies Of Pope Saint Gregory The Great On The Gospels | Jesus Christ The Good Shepherd
I am the good shepherd. I know my own – by which I mean, I love them – and my own know me. In plain words: those who love me are willing to follow me, for anyone who does not love the truth has not yet come to know it.
My dear brethren, you have heard the test we pastors have to undergo. Turn now to consider how these words of our Lord imply a test for yourselves also. Ask yourselves whether you belong to his flock, whether you know him, whether the light of his truth shines in your minds. I assure you that it is not by faith that you will come to know him, but by love; not by mere conviction, but by action. John the evangelist is my authority for this statement. He tells us that anyone who claims to know God without keeping his commandments is a liar.
Consequently, the Lord immediately adds: As the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for my sheep. Clearly he means that laying down his life for his sheep gives evidence of his knowledge of the Father and the Father’s knowledge of him. In other words, by the love with which he dies for his sheep he shows how greatly he loves his Father.
Again he says: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them; they follow me, and I give them eternal life. Shortly before this he had declared: If anyone enters the sheepfold through me he shall be saved; he shall go freely in and out and shall find good pasture. He will enter into a life of faith; from faith he will go out to vision, from belief to contemplation, and will graze in the good pastures of everlasting life.
So our Lord’s sheep will finally reach their grazing ground where all who follow him in simplicity of heart will feed on the green pastures of eternity. These pastures are the spiritual joys of heaven. There the elect look upon the face of God with unclouded vision and feast at the banquet of life for ever more.
Beloved brothers, let us set out for these pastures where we shall keep joyful festival with so many of our fellow citizens. May the thought of their happiness urge us on! Let us stir up our hearts, rekindle our faith, and long eagerly for what heaven has in store for us. To love thus is to be already on our way. No matter what obstacles we encounter, we must not allow them to turn us aside from the joy of that heavenly feast. Anyone who is determined to reach his destination is not deterred by the roughness of the road that leads to it. Nor must we allow the charm of success to seduce us, or we shall be like a foolish traveller who is so distracted by the pleasant meadows through which he is passing that he forgets where he is going.
The poem explores the transitory nature of human life and its obligations within the framework of divine order. The poem contrasts rest and action, reflecting on a tension between weariness and demands of purposeful living. The opening line of the poem establishes a choice: to rest or to engage. The speaker’s – Herbert’s soul rejects passivity and expresses a desire to act, reflecting a concern with spiritual stagnation [ … ]
Sometimes, when I read my Bible, I pause in the reading and say to myself: ‘This bit’s real.’ It would be fair to say, I have issues with Mary, because, contrary to what we are taught to say, Mary isn’t my mother. Rather: Mum is. One bit of the Bible-text says this: And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, “He is beside himself.” … And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Mark 3: 21; 31-35.) Here she comes. She is in considerable distress. I can imagine that. I can relate to that. To save her boy from whatever he’s got himself into this time. And you’re not telling me there isn’t something inside that. Her boy is beside himself. Radical. Radicalized. Radicalizing. A misunderstood word. /ˈradɪk(ə)l/ adjective & noun. 1 Forming the root, basis, or foundation; original, primary. 2a Inherent in the nature of a thing or person; fundamental. b Of action, change, an idea: going to the root or origin; far-reaching, thorough. c Advocating thorough or far-reaching change. d Characterized by departure from tradition; progressive; unorthodox. ‘He has a demon! And he is mad!’ – thus ‘the Jews’. (e.g. John 10: 20.) Come home! It’s all she wants. His family want him back now. But it is an exclusive cult: there is an inside and there is an outside; and on the outside, they are not meant to understand, lest they be converted. He has defined himself as different from anything she was. Only at the end does Jesus say to his Mum – and with savage, bitter irony: ‘Woman, behold your son.’ And then he dies. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. We ask that we might find Mary in our hearts as a Yes! place for Jesus. It is also recommended that we pray to Jesus that we may be further in oneness with Mary. It is self-emptying, such that we only exist insofar as we are responsive to God’s Word. * Last term, and put-out to pasture, the old Archbishop Emeritus came over to stay for a few days and did the odd class with us. He spoke of Yes! as the meaning of Mary’s virginity. And we were not very nice about him. One or two took umbrage. One or two got the hump. In a sense, his Grace, the Arch, basically wanted to move anyone he’d ever known from a high-place – a mountain – received theological ‘truth’ – to an imminent, human plane. Earthing the spiritual. Recalibrating metrics of life’s believability toward a spiritual sense of things. He might have asked the impermissible question: what happened? His Grace described it. God’s love as a cloud. This descended upon Mary – and subsumed her. Within the cloud, Mary capitulated utterly. She became only and purely a response to God’s love. As he spoke, the Arch cradled her. He carried her in his lap – in his hands. His Grace was a consecrated bishop. He was faith. He sat squat, a rounded man, hands cupped and ankles crossed, fingers interlocked, with parted thighs. Rumpled, washed, speckled. A lifetime’s skin… There could be no doubt His Grace spoke through long-term personal relationship with Mary. It was Julian went for him: ‘So are you saying Mary was a Virgin? Or are you not saying Mary was a Virgin?’ Nasty. No, it wasn’t pretty. Julian twisting his silver ring. For a moment, what Julian had said to the Arch simply failed to communicate. No, for a moment, that dumped on the air meant nothing. Then His Grace said: ‘There is a range of possible meanings we may understand in the question of Mary’s virginity. For example, there are understandings of the word virginity entailed in the action of giving birth.’ Julian said: ‘Duh! So had she had sex or hadn’t she?’ Trigger words. No, it wasn’t pretty. On that went for a little while. At length, Julian’s point seemed reluctantly conceded. Then the Arch told us a new story, an additionally human event, the more to baffle us. Controversially, he told us that Mary could not have been Joseph’s first wife, for this would not have been the way of things in the society of that time. His belief was that Joseph must have taken Mary into his household through pity. That would be normal, he said, for Joseph to bring a young, vulnerable girl, who is about to have a baby, within his protection, not meaning to enjoy with her marital relations, but through kindness. ‘And this story of the inn and stable,’ the Archbishop said, ‘it can’t have been like that really. Joseph has travelled with Mary to stay with his family, at home in Bethlehem, and they don’t want Mary in their house, for reasons which I am sure we can understand. It must have been there was considerable resistance to Mary. But Mary gives birth, and who can resist a baby? That’s what happened. It must have been. ‘I’m convinced that must have been how it happened really.’ Later that term, toward the beginning of Advent, we met boys who had been here before, in Valladolid, and now were in regular seminary. They had heard and recited verbatim all the Archbishop had said to them. Their spot-on impressions of each of the fathers were scathing. […]
Through these Bible verses, we are called upon to consider the persecution of Christians. Jesus speaks both of his own time, and of the time of the Apostles, and of time to come, including the present day. The persecution of Christians is a live issue at present in the Middle East, through the intolerance of some people and their leaders. In living memory, we recall the oppression and murder of Christians by totalitarian regimes. As we look back through history, we find so many of our saints are martyrs [ … ]
