This is one of our all-time favorite holy cards. The notion of Our Lady as Divine Shepherdess (La Divina Pastora), or as she's called sometimes, Mother of the Divine Shepherd, comes from a 1703 vision of the Virgin Mary as a shepherdess given to Capuchin Friar Isidore of Seville. The prayer on the back is a traditional prayer to Mary under that title.

The Divine Shepherdess has two celebrated Feast Days, coming either the week before the Feast of the Good Shepherd, which is the fourth Sunday of Eastertide. or on September 25th, both valid, and I am not scholar enough to answer which one is more official, if one is.

As a footnote, according to VaticanNew.Va, Good Shepherd Sunday is called that because in each of the three years of the Mass reading cycle, the Gospel is taken from John 10 in which Jesus develops an extended metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep.

The artwork on this card was done by our favorite German holy card maker, B. Kühlen, in the late 1800s. Usually he worked with Gladbach, a German printer, whose name isn't on this one. I think I've seen other iterations of this card where his name was on it, which if so, would mean that this was a reprint with some other printer, meaning it was a popular card and needed to be reprinted. In any event, it is still in circulation today as Catholic art, over a century later, because a lot of people think it is beautiful.

Card from our March 2025 Holy Card of the Month Series.

Available in quantities of 1000 for serious distribution. Contact us for higher quantities.

Thank you for your interest in our Catholic Art project.

Sue and John

St Mary's,

Lincoln, Nebraska

“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art.”

~ St. Pope John Paul II

Image Restoration © www.CatholicArtAndJewelry.com