Diptych of The Good Shepherd and a quotation from s. Therese of the Child Jesus

Description Diptych of The Good Shepherd and a quotation from s. Therese of the Child Jesus

Before describing this beautiful diptych representing the Good Shepherd, let us say a word about the importance of this subject in Christian iconography. The representation of the Good Shepherd was a familiar theme for early Christians. The oldest opuses dedicated to this subject date back to the second century AD. When we consider the biblical foundations of the representation of the Good Shepherd, we are not surprised by the presence of this subject in paleo-Christian art. By stopping only at the New Testament, there are two very well-known evangelical passages which highlight the good shepherd: the parable of the lost sheep in Luke XV and the discourse in Saint John, ch. X, where Christ the Savior is compared to the good Shepherd. These texts are for meditation and are an invitation to discover this merciful and infinite love of Jesus for each one of us in particular, and how we must return love for love without being discouraged or be distrusted because of our misery and smallness.
This last consideration naturally leads us to focus more specifically on the quote from Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus which is on the right panel of this diptych:
It seems completely in harmony with the feelings of the sheep represented on the left panel. The sheep leaning against the shepherd's chest seems to trust him completely, and abandons himself unreservedly to this good Shepherd. It experienced its weakness, its poverty, its smallness. Far from putting off the shepherd, such feelings attract all his kindness, solicitude and he takes pleasure in hugging it to show that it has nothing to fear and to invite it to an even more total abandonment and as said Saint Teresa to a blind hope. Thus the Christian soul which is aware of its misery and its weakness and which abandons itself totally in the goodness of God, attracts on it the gaze of the Savior, of the Good Shepherd. Jesus, who burns to pour out His Mercy on men, as soon as He sees a soul ready to welcome it, rushes to pour on it, His torrents of Mercy and Love. As psalm 41 says, the abyss calls the abyss, that is to say, the abyss of the misery of man calls the abyss of the mercy of God, but for that it is necessary that man recognize his misery and trust God. To finish we can recall this reflection of the sister of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Céline, in religion sister Geneviève, who during all her life worked tirelessly to make known and explain the little way of her sister; so she said that she had one regret, it is to have not insisted enough on humility, because this virtue is really at the base of the small way.