Jesus

About Jesus

Of all the images Jesus used to speak about himself, the Good Shepherd is the one that has carried furthest through the centuries. He tells of a man with a hundred sheep who loses one — and leaves the ninety-nine in the field to go after that one. He does not send someone else, does not wait for it to find its own way back: he goes, searches, and when he finds it carries it home on his shoulders without a word of reproach.

The parable was told to people who criticised the company he kept with those written off as beyond saving. It is the key to almost everything he said: worth is not in what a person produces, it is in the person. That is why the gospel records the same gesture so often — stopping for one individual in the middle of a crowd.

His word is the message that comforts without asking anything back, forgives without recalling the debt, and hands someone the chance to begin again. It is what people look for when the matter is too big to fit inside a gift.

A message from Jesus is sent at baptisms, first communions, at Christmas and Easter, in times of illness or grief, and whenever someone needs to hear they have not been forgotten.

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