Anne-Gabrielle and the science of the cross

Uterrible ordeal

The girl who reports this “thoughtlessness” to her mother is not yet eight years old, her name is Anne-Gabrielle, she is suffering from cancer, she will soon die. This terrible ordeal – the body which is gradually disintegrating from within – Anne-Gabrielle did not see it alone. She is surrounded by her mom, her dad, and her three siblings. Priests also visit it regularly. When you discover your life, a simple life that is shared between the family, the school, the parish, the wolves, you are fascinated by the high wisdom that God has placed in the soul of this child.

The hospital as a school

It all started around Christmas 2008 with a banal fall from my bike. Then the discovery of the disease and the immersion of the whole family in the white universe of the hospital (Anne-Gabrielle hates the hospital…), with its beauties and its harshness. She faces with growing courage the chemotherapy sessions and the very heavy treatments that are imposed on her ailing body.

Anne-Gabrielle is not inert in the disease. Of course, his body is inexorably disintegrating day after day, but day by day his soul grows in strength and wisdom.

Wisdom From On High

As the painful symptoms unfold in her, Anne-Gabrielle manifests through her attitudes and her words a deep wisdom which goes beyond her age, a wisdom which exceeds even the wisdom of old people. Wisdom from on high. Does she have voices, like Jeanne in Domrémy? No, but she has faith. An educated faith rooted in prayer, a prayer first learned and lived in his family and his parish, then lived in an increasingly personal way.

This is evidenced by his “stupidity,” which closes the mouths of the wise and powerful, and enlightens the simple according to the Spirit. It is also a faith that seeks, as St. Augustine would say, to experience worries, anxieties, thinking about sin, sinners, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, God who is not loved… A faith that rejoices at the thought of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

The science of the cross

We know that we do not have a satisfactory answer to human suffering, especially the suffering of a child. But we have the answer from Anne-Gabrielle, who teaches us how to welcome and face our own trials (illness, but also discord, dissension in families, etc.). She teaches us through her short life and without long speech the science of the cross. She heard, in her child’s heart, the call of Jesus: “If anyone wants to be my disciple, let him pick up his cross every day and follow me. With her tender smile, she followed him. Until the end.