Illumina Domine Blog – Devotion to The Holy Face

 

“My desire is to dwell in Your Hearth of love  

In the radiance of the brightness of Your Face

and to live on You alone.” ~St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

There can be no dispute that we live in evil times. The face of the Bride of Christ has been defiled and disfigured horribly by the Church’s own members, who by blasphemy, spit in the Face of Christ, and prefer their own wicked idols to the one, true, and living God. There is no need to enumerate the offenses against God, and it is useless to bemoan them. There is, however, a remedy for the offense which is in our own power: to restore what has been defiled, by turning back to His Face, and as a bride has eyes only for her husband, to have eyes only for Jesus.

It has been said that God raises up saints for a particular time in history as a remedy the evils of that time. Recently canonized, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, is such a saint. She tells us what it means to be “a bride of Christ”:

“To be a bride means to have eyes only for Him… our heart wholly taken over, wholly possessed, as if it has passed out of itself and into Him, our soul filled with His soul, filled with His prayer, our whole being captivated and given.

To be “a bride of Christ” is to rest from everything in Him, and to allow Him to rest from everything in our soul!

To be “the bride of Christ”…is to have all rights over His Heart…It’s a heart-to-heart exchange for a whole lifetime…It’s living with…always with…”

O my beloved Christ, crucified by love, I wish to be a bride for Your Heart; I wish to cover You with glory; I wish to love You–even unto death.” 

St. Elizabeth of the Trinity wrote that God has created human beings in His image and likeness to be able to contemplate Himself in His creatures.  When we, in turn, are contemplating Christ, we become all His. His image and likeness is restored in us. Like the veil of St. Veronica, the imprint of His Face will remain upon our souls.

Then, the Most Holy Trinity must become our home, she says, that we must never leave. St. Elizabeth accomplished this by surrendering herself to God’s perfect will completely, keeping her soul in silence and peace, docile to the touch of the Holy Spirit in each moment, and keeping her gaze on God.

“It is Your continual desire to associate Yourself with Your creatures…How can I better satisfy Your desire than by keeping myself simply and lovingly turned towards You, so that You can reflect Your own image in me, as the sun is reflected through pure crystal? …We will be glorified in the measure in which we will have been conformed to the image of His divine Son.  So, let us contemplate this adored Image, let us remain unceasingly under it’s radiance so that it may imprint itself on us.” –Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, O.C.D.

The face of the Bride of Christ will become beautiful once again, one person at a time, when each becomes a “praise of glory” like St. Elizabeth, reflecting the light on the Face of Christ to others.  “A soul united to Jesus is a living smile that radiates Him and gives Him!”

Our souls will be glorified in the measure in which they will have been conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. In order to be conformed to Him, we must know Him through prayer, as St. Elizabeth did, by first becoming aware of His Divine indwelling in her soul.

“A praise of glory is a soul that gazes on God in faith and simplicity; it is a reflector of all that He is; it is like a bottomless abyss into which He can flow and expand; it is also like a crystal through which He can radiate and contemplate all His perfections and His own splendor.  A soul which permits the divine Being to satisfy in itself His need to communicate all that He is and all that He has.”

“The Word will imprint in your soul, as in a crystal, the image of His own beauty, so that you may be pure with His purity, luminous with His light.”

“May the Father fill you with great largesse, May the Word imprint Himself in the center of your heart, and may the Spirit of love consume you unceasingly.” ~St. Elizabeth of the Trinity