Presentation of the Central Figure
Of the Icon
Therese Doctor Amongst the Doctors
Thérèse is the actual centre of the icon and the Gospel is the heart of her heart. In fact, the Gospel never left her. Following the example of Mary, she kept the “Word of God” and “meditated on it day and night”. With a clearly defined gesture Thérèse reveals to us the heart of her heart and shows us Christ-made-Word. How many times does she not tell us that “Keeping the word of Jesus is the only condition of our happiness, the proof of our love for Him because the word of Jesus is Himself…”.
This lived experience of the mind and the “keeping” of the Word is felt, in a palpable way, in the abundance of scriptural quotations that we find in her writings and the various comments she makes on them, natural fruits of a purified faith. It does not seem daring to say that it is Jesus, Himself, who speaks through Thérèse’s teaching, since she reflects the light of his Word. This is why the Gospel sparkles on her heart. Therese is transparently obvious in the double movement of receiving and giving the Word.
The flame on the Gospel, represents the Fire which springs from this Word and which illuminates. It rests on the Gospel: the Holy Spirit rests on the Word. It shows the vivifying influence of the Holy Spirit on Thérèse. The flame consumes her and transforms her into fire, especially after her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love of God (9 June 1895), where this flame burned her like real fire.
Thérèse proclaimed: “In the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be Love…”. Now in the icon, it is Love who sits enthroned in her heart and reigns there in power. The perspective is therefore reversed. It was necessary, in fact, that Thérèse suffered the delights of this substantial union in the most intimate part of her soul in order to be completely transfigured, divinised by being solely identified with this singular flame of Love. Thérèse can then be Love within the Church by drawing from the very root of the Heart of God. The universal fecundity that ensues is then a divine work springing from this personal union: a formidable privilege in which Thérèse’s heart expands until it reaches the dimensions of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. In fact, this Love has a cosmic scope while at one and the same time being quite unique.
Here on earth, the law of nature wants all science to be an indication and echo of a superior science. The uniqueness of the parchment itself attests to this. The human sciences disprove themselves in order to profess that they realise themselves in an entirely different science…, that of the folly of God, supreme Wisdom, the “Science of Love”. This was the only good that Thérèse aspired to: “the science of Love,… I only want this science…” (Written in French on the parchment she is holding). To love Jesus and to make Him loved – Thérèse was haunted by this desire, having well understood that “only love can make us pleasing to God”. It teaches us how to get there, it is a practical science. He, “the divine Beggar of love”, allows himself be taken by the heart, “allows himself be chained by a downy hair on our neck… since the smallest actions done by love are those which charm his heart”.
Jesus does not ask for great deeds but only for surrender and gratitude. Let us listen to the Master, Himself who instructed Thérèse “in secret about the things of his love”: “Jesus takes pleasure in showing me the only path that leads to this divine furnace, this path is the abandonment (surrender, entrustment) of the little child who falls asleep without fear in the arms of his Father”. The brilliant delicacy of her intuition of the heart of God is expressed in the gesture of holding the parchment which denotes a delicate elegance.
On the icon, Thérèse’s two arms, one directed upwards, the other downwards, and which are located on the transverse line of the graphics, symbolise, in her, this love of truth and this cutting sincerity which ruthlessly suppresses all compromise and concession. Thérèse does not circumvent any aspect of her being and without ever hiding, accepts total responsibility for her beliefs. The movement of her two arms expresses a perfect continuity between the lower and the upper ones, where the upper one is above the movement of the rising lower one, namely, they represent the perfect image of our humanity, whose greatness is revealed particularly within the heart of the most abject misery. Her horizon is the deification of the total being. It is from these depths that the human being attains the greatness of God. Therein, the ardour and her audacity in her weakness, as confessed by the saint herself, finds its sublime expression.
The inclination of the head also expresses this littleness, assumed in love, which has hollowed out in her spaces of humility which attract the gift of God: “growing up is impossible, I must bear myself as I am… the elevator which must raise me to heaven, these are your arms, oh Jesus!… I must then remain small, become more and more so”. Here is the “very straight, very short little path, a completely new little path” that Thérèse has the mission of teaching us, so let us rather say to remind ourselves: it is the path of evangelical childhood, “if you do not return to state of the children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”.
Therese seems to lower herself, to hide, to disappear into her nothingness, although it is not a movement of flight. Her head is bent with confidence and abandon, like that of a bird sheltering under maternal wings. To stop there, without emphasising the effort that the soul must exert and the virile courage with which it must act, is to misunderstand Thérèse and the message that she delivers to us. How many times did she not mention “the flowers of the small sacrifices” that she throws to Jesus. The “little way” of childhood was, for her, a theological life lived in its entirety. A Life of Faith and Hope in Love. From her left leg, emanates a degree of luminosity reinforced by reflections which reveal the Gift of Force which animates her. It is the same for the lively movement of the side of her dress which expresses strength and which suggests at the same time the human recesses concealing deep fragility concealed within the recesses of the human heart. Weakness then refines strength, preventing it from degenerating into crude brutality which is none other than pride.
Thérèse offers her weakness as she would have offered her strength. Much more, it offers its weakness as supreme strength (note the oxymoron that embodies “reckless abandonment”). Didn’t St. Paul boast of his weakness as the sole reason for glory, saying: “When I am weak, then I am strong?”. And what more impressive and truthful a force than this astonishing heroic lucidity? If enduring one’s miseries is powerful, what would it be like to transfigure them? What is absolutely supernatural is that these miseries remain what they are even in the splendour of their glory, mingled with the exaltation of victory, and never lose their properly human character. Weakness is therefore rich in strength; even preceding any possible conversion, it turns out – it is virtually truth to say – to be in itself, a superior force. “You [have] deigned to share this precious Cross with me, I hope in Heaven to be like you and to see the sacred stigmata of your Passion shining on my glorified body”.
We can therefore see the impact that her “little doctrine” caused in the heart of the Church, a revolution symbolised by the pronounced movements of the mantle falling in cascades on the right side of the icon. She discovered the true face of God who allows himself to be seduced by our trust in Him “even if I had on my conscience all the sins that can be committed, I would go, heartbroken with repentance, throw myself into the arms of Jesus, because I know how much He cherishes the prodigal son who returns to Him”.
The Promised Land is entirely contained in the earthly pilgrimage, in the desire one has for it and in the effort to reach it. Each step of this Easter exodus – even through perils and pitfalls – is a promise and anticipation of the good to come. Thus, the dynamism of Thérèse’s attitude shows the energy of the spouse who runs with a light and cheerful step towards her Beloved. She reminds us of the bride in the Song of Songs who is totally overwhelmed and seduced. She has arrived at the depths of love, this Promised Land. She wants to hide there; she has entered the inner cellar to drink. She lives more in the One she loves than in the body that animates her. The bowing of her head also shows the attitude of the enamoured soul that has let the Lord steal her heart.
Thérèse went through the stages of spiritual life, she attained divine transformation. Her flight, however, does not stop at the joys of marriage, but she attains to motherhood: to be a mother of souls through her union with Jesus. Maternity for her is a holocaust. Following the example of her Spouse who did not stop at the triumph received in Jerusalem nor at the glory of his miracles – she wants to drink the chalice with Him to the dregs. With his divine blood Jesus watered the Word He sowed. The ink He used to write himself in us was his Precious Blood, Thérèse for her part “passed through the crucible of suffering… shared this precious Cross”. She followed, with determination, the One who was “without beauty or brilliance”. Love presupposes resemblance and identification with the Beloved.
Although the face is young, in the icon the gaze accentuated by a shadow between the eyebrows is singularly serious: “…despite my extreme smallness I dare to stare at the Divine Sun”. This face-to-face gaze in the darkness of pure Faith, which at the end of her life becomes “this dark tunnel,” revealed her more intensely than any other sensitive communication. Thérèse’s gaze contains several expressions: it is the gaze of the blind man who hopes and who sees the invisible because faith has made him feel the reality of Merciful Love. Seated at the sinners’ table, Thérèse adopts their gaze: that of the condemned man who knows he is redeemed. Her gaze is also that of Love who pursues the unbeliever, the desperate man, to the door of his personal hell to cry out to him with compassion: “don’t destroy yourself, I love you”.
The purple splashes on Thérèse’s habit symbolize this participation at the sinners’ table. They are barely perceptible to signify her desire to hide her sufferings so that they are not visible to the gaze of creatures and even to God’s. Didn’t she exclaim? “O my God! But if it were possible that you yourself were to ignore my sufferings, I would still be happy”.Finally, Thérèse seems to walk forward to meet the one who contemplates her – such is her desire, manifested several times, not to rest in heaven as long as there are souls to save: “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth”.