Letting the Child Jesus Lead Us, to Save the World

“If I could live my life over, I would like to be nothing but a very little child constantly giving my hand to the Child Jesus.” These were the last words of Bossuet (1627–1704) on his deathbed. Céline Martin (Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face) quoted these ultima verba of the Eagle of Meaux as the most beautiful formulation of the “little way” of her Sister Thérèse, the way of childhood and self-abandonment. 

In this spirit, on the cover of this issue of Magnificat for Holy Week, a great painter and contemporary of Bossuet, Mathieu Le Nain (1607–1677), shows the point to which the Child Jesus could lead us by the hand, if only we consent to followed him. 

Contemplating the arma Christi

The dusky atmosphere, reinforced by the funereal, dark purple curtain that unveils the scene, gives the picture a dramatic dimension. However, at the highest point of the dark sky, a porthole of golden light comes to illuminate a handsome child dressed in a white tunic that is too big for him, as though it were predestined to be the one belonging to the Transfigured, the Resurrected. 

The Child has reached the age of reason, seven or eight years old; he has already begun to grow in stature, in wisdom, and in grace. His beautiful, discreetly haloed face is marked by seriousness. It reflects the depth of an interior life that is both humanly contemplative and divinely animated. On his knees, with his arms crossed and his right hand on his heart, the Child Jesus contemplates the instruments of his Passion: the cross, reduced to his present size; behind him the lantern of the guards who will come to arrest him and the ladder that will make it possible to take down his mortal remains; in front of him the pincers, the hammer; and also the basin, the pitcher, and the towel that will enable Pilate to wash his hands after sentencing God to death; then the lance, the dice with which the soldiers will gamble for the seamless garment, and the nails; further on the strange-shaped column to which the Man of Sorrows will be bound for the scourging; finally, a little further to the right, still planted in the ground, the branch of hyssop that will serve to lift up to the lips of the crucified man the sponge soaked in vinegar. 

Our reason for being Christians

This masterpiece invites us first to consider that—just as much as during his Passion— Jesus was the Savior of the world during the thirty years that he spent living in the world “like everybody else,” a child, an adolescent, an adult, in a family, in society, as a carpenter. And so, let us not doubt for a moment that in giving our hand to this Child, through the grace of the Eucharistic sacrament and of the New Commandment, each one of us can fully commune, in his everyday family, social, and professional life, with the salvific work of Jesus during what has come to be known as his “hidden life.” But of course, this picture of the Child Jesus contemplating the instruments of his Passion invites us still more explicitly to give our hand unceasingly to the Child Jesus, to the point of contemplating with him what remains for us to suffer in our own flesh of the ordeals of Christ.¹

Over the course of this Holy Week, without ever letting go of the hand of the Child Jesus, we can be led to contemplate, so as to discern it better, the salvific dimension of our whole life, including our own passion and our own death when the hour arrives. For such is indeed our mission as Christians: to be unceasingly, in the historical place of our own vocation, an active member of the Son of God, the Savior. 

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¹ A reflection inspired by the bold statement of Saint Paul in Col 1:24, to indicate that it is up to each one of us to reenact in our own lives the perfect offering that Jesus made of his life to his Father.

Pierre-Marie Dumont
Jesus as a child in adoration of the cross, Mathieu Le Nain (17^_th c.), private collection. Image: Maison de vente aux enchères Rouillac, www.rouillac.com