It is in these moments that I would paint Mary

The Madonna is pale and she looks at the Child. The way one should depict her should be with a sort of anxious wonder that has only once appeared in a human face. For Christ is her child, the flesh of her flesh and the fruit of her womb. She has carried him for nine months, she will nurse him, and her milk will become the blood of God.

At times, the temptation is so strong that she could almost forget that he is God. She hugs him and she says, "My boy!" But at other times, she remains completely frozen and she thinks: "God is here!" …

But no child has been executed more cruelly nor torn more quickly from his mother because he is God, and this Child is greater in all things than she can even imagine. And it is a hard test for a mother to be ashamed of herself and her human condition in front of her son. But I think that there are also other moments, fast and transitory, where she feels at the same time that Christ is her son, her little one, and that he is God. She looks at him and thinks: "This God is my child, this divine flesh is my flesh, he is made of me, he has my eyes, and the shape of his mouth is the shape of my mouth. He is God and he is like me."

And no woman has had her God for her alone. A very small God who can be hugged and kissed, a warm God who smiles and breathes, a God who can be touched and is alive. And it is in those moments that I would paint Mary, if I were a painter, and I would try to render her expression of bold tenderness and the shyness with which she moves a finger to touch the soft skin of this little God-child whose warm weight she feels on her lap and who is smiling at her.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1)

Meditation written during the war

(1) Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905 - April 15, 1980) was an atheist French author and philosopher.