CMP Review 2023-10-08

“Feed us, the children, as sheep.”

This prayer we find in chapter 9 of Christ the Educator.

The writer continues, quoting Jesus: “‘I will be their shepherd,’ he says, ‘and I will be close to them,’ … ‘They shall call on me,’ he says, and I will answer, ‘Here I am.’”

And then the writer concludes: “Such is our Teacher, both good and just. He said he had not come to be served but to serve, … he who labored for our sake and promised ‘to give his life as ransom for many,’ a thing that, as he said, only the good Shepherd will do.”

And so Christ the Educator is Christ the Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.

The writer was Clement of Alexandria, writing around the turn of the third century. It was about that same time that the first Christian art began to emerge. In the Catacombs of Priscilla, an unknown artist drew the Good Shepherd on the ceiling, a symbol in art echoing Clement’s symbol in words.

Charlotte Mason offered her own symbol too, a symbol in poetry. It too calls us to revere the beautiful Shepherd, the One who stood with us when the hireling fled. Read or listen here.

@artmiddlekauff