“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

There are also other references to Jesus as a shepherd in the Gospel of Matthew, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the First Letter of Peter; and in the Book of Revelation we find the remarkable combination of both Lamb and Shepherd in Chapter 7, verses 16–17, which says of those in Heaven that they “will hunger no more and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat, for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Because of these biblical references, there is a long and rich history of depicting Jesus as a shepherd in Christian art and devotion. Indeed, some of the very earliest examples of Christian art are Roman catacomb drawings of this image. Since the early Church depictions of this symbol have ranged from powerful and poignant to sentimental and cloying to controversial and erotic. For a helpful study at the intersection of religion and art history, see Jennifer Awes Freeman, The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power (Baylor University Press, 2021). She argues that, far from being an exclusively comforting and bucolic metaphor, Good Shepherd symbolism carries connotations of royal power and rule, connotations which are themselves subverted by the Christian emphasis on self-sacrificial service. She concludes that “the Good Shepherd is in fact a much more complex and compelling figure than has previously been considered” (161).

It is not known precisely why the three founders of the Oratory were led to dedicate their new fellowship to Jesus the Good Shepherd, but reflections on these biblical passages and subsequent devotional imagery inspired by them have been essential to our distinctive spirituality and pastoral practice ever since.