Diptych : Thérèse at eight years

Description Diptych : Thérèse at eight years

The quotation chosen for this religious diptych comes from the autobiographical manuscript A written at the request of Mother Agnes of Jesus. Here is the background to this quote:

"When a gardener carefully surrounds with care a fruit that he wants to ripen before the season, it is never to leave it hanging on the tree, but in order to present it on a brilliantly served table. It was with a similar intention that Jesus lavished his graces on his little flower ... He who cried out in the days of his mortal life in a transport of joy: 'My Father, I bless you for what you have hidden these things to the wise and to the prudent and that you have revealed them to the little ones, 'wanted to burst into me his mercy; because I was small and weak he lowered himself towards me, he secretly instructed me in things of his love. Ah! if scholars who had spent their lives in study had come to question me, no doubt they would have been surprised to see a fourteen-year-old child understand the secrets of perfection, secrets that all their science cannot discover for them, since for possess them you must be poor in spirit! ... As Saint John of the Cross says in his song: 'I had neither guide nor light, except that which shone in my heart, this light guided me more surely than that of the south, at the place where the One who knows me perfectly, awaited me. ' "

As an image chosen to illustrate this sentence of Saint Thérèse, we put a photo of Thérèse at 8 years old. from this it should not be concluded that the quotation of the saint of Lisieux applies to her when she was 8 years old. The context of the quote clearly shows that she is referring to her adolescence. But by taking a photograph of the saint still having the age of a weak and small child, we gave her a spiritual meaning.
This photograph is a detail from a photo taken in 1881 with her sister Céline, four years older than she, who puts the left hand on her left shoulder. This little detail allows us to better appreciate the association of this photo and this quote. Because it comes from a passage where Saint Thérèse talks about her deep friendship with her sister Céline. A few lines above, Saint Thérèse had written: "Céline had become the intimate confidant of my thoughts". And below, after the quote, we can read the following lines: "it was, so to speak, the same soul that made us live; for a few months now we have been enjoying the sweetest life together that young girls can dream of ... Hardly had we had time to taste this ideal of happiness, that we had to turn away freely (announcement of his vocation), and my darling Céline did not rebel for a moment. … Céline therefore became the confidant of my struggles and my sufferings, she took the same part as if it had been a question of her own vocation."

Quotation :

Parce-que j'étais petite et faible,
Jésus s'abaissait vers moi
et m'instruisait en secret
des choses de son amour.

Sainte Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus
et de la sainte Face