Description On the painting: Painted with oil paint on a primed, heavyweight canvas, the painted part measures roughly 8×10, and the canvas overall at roughly 10×12. Comes with the simple wood frame shown in the photos which hangs on your wall with string threaded through the top bar. Frame is attached with magnets and provides that finishing touch besides making it possible to hang! Can you get this painting stretched on canvas bars and traditionally framed? Probably – let me know if you do, I would love to see pictures! I do not finish them this way because the rough edge is by design and provides its own charm and character. On the reference: Painted from one of the few surviving photos of the saint, copyright for this particular rendition remains with me, Monica Skrzypczak. Do not copy without permission, post as you would desire on social media, but be sure to tag @outpouringoftrust.sacredart No prints will be made of any Saint paintings. _______ On the Saint: The Saint of the Little Way. Born during the time of the heresy of Jansenism, Therese was heavily influenced by its ideology that all souls are trash because of Original Sin and completely unable to obtain any sort of grace or sanctity through the use of free will – that it was though only God’s grace and predestination that you could merit heaven. It sounds legit, but its a heresy because it denies free will – choosing to lead a life of sanctity or choosing to live a life of depravity didn’t matter because if you were going to be saved God would swoop in and do that or if He didn’t decide you would be saved, there was literally no prayer, no sacrifice, no almsgiving, nothing that you could do to change it. We have to choose to love God. We will always be unworthy, it IS God’s freely given gifts of grace, but if we aren’t trying we can never obtain sanctity, and if we are trying God will help us. Which is exactly what Therese found in her Little Way. She searched through the Gospels for a sign that all was not lost, that despite the fact that she was the weakest of God’s children that she had a chance to be a Saint and fulfill this great desire of her heart. And she found it: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Mt. 18:3 Therese chose to remain little, like a child, and perform all her duties with great love, no matter how small. In remaining little, Jesus would stoop to the low places, and seeing her effort, take her up and bring her to the heights. It was her elevator to heaven. And unlike Jansenism, it rests greatly on our use of free will to perform our duties with great love, our free will to choose to remain little and small, trusting in the goodness of God, the Fatherhood of God, to come and take us to heaven. Before she died, Therese said that she wanted to spend her heaven helping souls on earth know God. Her unfailing intercession has made her both the patron saint of missionaries (though she remained in a cloistered convent her whole life) and a Doctor of the Church.
