Thank you, to Paul Badde, for sending this beautiful video from Omnis Terra celebration at the Basilica Shrine of the Holy Face in Manoppello, Italy!
“Come apart for a little while and seek the Face of God.”
~St. Anselm
“It is the Church’s task to reflect the light of Christ in every historical period, to make His Face shine also before the generations of the new millennium. Our witness, however, would be hopelessly inadequate if we ourselves had not first contemplated His Face.”
–Pope St. John Paul II
“For God so loved the world”
The Holy Face Novena will begin on Sunday, February 4th, and will be posted here for each day.
The Feast of the Holy Face for 2024 will fall on February 13th –“Shrove Tuesday” — the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
“Do you see how I suffer? Yet, very few understand me. Those who say they love me are very ungrateful! I have given my HEART as the sensible object of my great LOVE to men and I give my FACE as the sensible object of my sorrow for the sins of men. I wish that it be venerated by a special Feast on Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. I wish that the feast be preceded by a novena in which the faithful make reparation with Me, joining together and sharing in my sorrow.” –Words of Our Lord to Bl. Mother Maria Pierina de Micheli (1890-1945)
Another holy nun, Sr. Marie St. Pierre (1816-1848) of Tours, France, was given revelations about devotion to the Face of Jesus. She received communications from Our Lord, who asked for a devotion to His Holy Face and a Work of Reparation: the offering His Holy Face to the Father in reparation for the sins of blasphemy, sacrilege, the crimes of atheistic communism, the profanation of the Holy Name, and the Holy Day of Sunday. The sins against the first three if the Ten Commandments are the greatest sins against God. The damage done by our sins to our relationship with God are reflected in the Face of of His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. For this reason, devotion and reparation to the Holy Face is fitting in order to make amends for what we have done to Him.
Our Lord said to her, “I have taken upon my Head all the sins of mankind, so that my members may be spared. Therefore, offer my Face to the Father, this is the means of appeasing Him.”
“My daughter, I give you my Face and my Heart, I give you my Blood, and I open my wounds to you; draw from them and pour it out. Buy without money, my Blood that is the price of souls. Oh! What grief for my Heart to see the remedies which have cost me so dearly, scorned. Ask from my Father as many souls as the number of drops of Blood that I shed during my Passion.”
“All who will undertake this work and who will truly devote themselves to it will not die the eternal death. I will defend their cause before my Father and I will give them the kingdom of Heaven.”
“This work is the essence of charity!” — Our Lord to Sr. Marie St. Pierre
King Abgare recieving a miraculous image of the Holy Face
“To contemplate The Face of Christ, and to contemplate it with Mary, is the “program” which I have set before The Church at the dawn of the third millennium…To contemplate Christ involves being able to recognize Him wherever He manifests Himself, in His many forms of presence, but above all, in the living Sacrament of His Body and Blood.”
Pope St. John Paul II
“The Reparation is a Work destined to save society.” Pope Pius IX
To those who placed idols before the living and true God, the prophet Micah warned: “One day they will invoke the Lord, but He will not answer them, and on that day He will hide His Face from them because of the evil of their conduct.” (Micah 3:4)
St. Veronica with Sudarium 1420
However, those who who honor and glorify God; those who seek and contemplate the Face of Jesus Christ — they will be transformed into His Image — According to Pope St. John Paul II this is the meaning of the action of the woman known as “Veronica” . The “Veronica” or “Vera Icon” historically referred the the image itself, however, there is a deep message imparted to each Christian in the legend of St. Veronica: each act of charity, every act of compassion will leave the imprint of the Face of Jesus in our souls, transforming us into His own Image.
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
(2 Cor. 3:18)
There is a “Vera Icon” or “True Image” of the Face of Christ, which is kept in the Basilica Shrine of the Holy Face in Manoppello, Italy. It is believed to be the sudarium cloth that covered Jesus head at his burial and found in the tomb after the Resurrection. All are invited to give honor and glory to God on January 28th, 2024, either in person, or via the internet, by joining in the celebration of “Omnis Terra” at the Basilica Shrine of the Holy Face…
“Omnis terra adoret te, Deus, et psallat tibi!”
“The whole earth adores you, O God, and sing hymns to you” (Ps 65:4)
The first “Omnis Terra” procession of Pope Innocent III in 1208 carrying “the Veronica” Face of Christ (from “Liber Regulae Sancti Spiritus in Saxia” manuscript 1350)*
Omnis Terra, is the Latin for “All the Earth.”The revelation of Jesus’s glory is the cause for all the earth rejoicing, giving praise to His Name! Omnis Terra will be celebrated with a solemn Mass and a procession at the Sanctuary Basilica of the Holy Face in Manoppello, Italy. The live-feed will begin at 11:00am local time (Rome time) Archbishop Bruno Forte will be presiding. A blessing will be imparted with the reliquary of the Veil of the Holy Face during the celebration. (Link for Live-stream here)
Since ancient times processions have been a reminder that our Christian life is a constant movement toward God and our eternal home. A procession is a type of pilgrimage and expression of beauty and piety that flows from the liturgy. There is power in this beautiful procession that terrifies the infernal foe and makes all of hell tremble.Processing with the Face of Jesus brings his whole person before us, and for all the earth to adore and glorify Him — to proclaim to the unbelieving world that Jesus Christ is LORD!
The world is not only unbelieving but publicly blasphemes God to His Face, and it is for this reason that Our Lord must be honored publicly. Whether it is within the confines of a church or through the city streets, the procession is a public function of faith, hope, and love. It is an antidote to the poison disseminated by our culture which falsely asserts that religion is “private” and not something to be brought up in polite society or in the public square.
“Vera Icon” Holy Face of Manoppello (Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN)
The “Living Face” becomes visible on the Holy Veil of Manoppello. Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN
The eyes following the onlooker — Holy Veil of Manoppello (Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN)
Il Volto Santo – The Face of Love and Mercy (Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN
“We process toward our heavenly home in the company of God. Procession is the function of faith, which burns in our hearts and beams in our faces, and makes our voices tremulous with emotion as our ‘Lauda Sion’ bids defiance to an unbelieving world.” ~Fr. Frederick W. Faber in his treatise on the Blessed Sacrament
Detail of Face of Jesus on the Holy Veil from the precious manuscript *”Liber Regulae Sancti Spiritus in Saxia”
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone holding the reliquary containing the Veil of the Holy Face of Manoppello on the occasion of Omnis Terra in 2019. Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN
“Do Whatever He Tells You, and You Will Spread the Face of His Love to the Whole World”
“The entrance chant for our Mass today – “All the earth will worship you, O God, and will sing to you, sing to your name” – happens to be the same entrance chant prescribed for last Sunday’s Mass, the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, popularly referred to as “Omnis terra” Sunday, taken from the first words of the chant in Latin, as we just heard it at the beginning of Mass, “Omnis terra adoret te, Deus.” Every Mass has a prescribed entrance chant, usually a Scripture verse, very often from one of the Psalms, and the Mass gets its name from the first word or two of that chant (such as “Gaudete” Sunday and “Laetare” Sunday).
The Holy Face of Jesus
Why do I bring this up? It recalls a bit of Church history that underscores why Jesus came into the world. The story is told that in pre-Christian Rome the Emperor decided to have all Roman residents originally from other places take soil from their homeland and deposit it in a designated place close to the Vatican Hill, less than a quarter of a mile away. There he built a temple to honor the pagan Roman gods, as it contained soil from all the earth, “omnis terra.”
After Rome became Christian, the Pope built a church over that spot, which we know as the church of the Holy Spirit, and every year on that Sunday, “Omnis terra” Sunday, he would process from St. Peter’s Basilica to the church of the Holy Spirit with a veil bearing the face of Jesus. The veil in question was preserved from antiquity as one of the burial cloths that covered Jesus’ face, and was believed to be such an accurate representation of his face that it was called “the true icon of Rome,” in Latin, vera icona Romana: “vera icona,” whence the name, “Veronica.” This is how the story circulated later in the Middle Ages of a woman by that name who wiped our Lord’s face as he carried his Cross to Calvary.
There are many truly remarkable, even miraculous, features about this cloth that point to its authenticity, but that is a subject for another discourse. The point for us here today is that that procession instituted in the Middle Ages was to claim Jesus Christ as the one Savior of all the world, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the one, true God to whom all the earth owes worship and allegiance. This is the spiritual lesson of the ritual that developed around that veil.
The story of Veronica, though, also bears for us a spiritual message. As Pope St. John Paul II reflected in his meditation on the sixth Station of the Cross, every act of charity done in the name of Jesus Christ, with the spirit of his love, leaves the imprint of his image. This is how we translate the universality of the salvation Jesus won for us into language people can understand in our own time and place. The love of Christ is truly a universal language, understood everywhere and in every culture, leaving his image and thus changing both persons involved in that encounter of authentic Christian charity.”
Archbishop Ganswain holding the replica of the Holy Veil of Manoppello at Spirito Santo in Rome. 2016
History was also made on “Omnis Terra”(All the earth) Sunday in January of 2016, when bishops, priests, and pilgrims re-enacted the historic “Omnis Terra” Procession of Pope Innocent III (pictured above), carrying a reproduction of the precious image that many scholars identify with “the Veronica” or “true image” of the Face of Jesus. The pilgrim procession began at St. Peter’s in Rome and processed to Spirito Santo church and hospital, drawing attention especially to the Face of Christ in the sick and the poor.
On the occasion of the first “Omnis Terra” procession in 1208, Pope Innocent III wrote this beautiful prayer of devotion to the Veil of Holy Face of Jesus:
“O God, who has marked us with the light of Thy Face as your memorial, and at the request of Veronica, left us Thy Image imprinted on the sudarium; grant we pray, that by your passion and death, to adore, venerate and honor you, in mystery and as through a mirror on earth, so that we might be able to certainly see you, face to face, when you come as our judge.”
On “Omnis Terra” Sunday, January 15, 2017, history was made once again at the Basilica Sanctuary of the Holy Face in Manoppello, Italy, when a third solemn annual procession was introduced–in addition to the two solemn processions already observed in May (commemorating the arrival of the Holy Veil to Manoppello), and the solemn procession in August (on the Feast of the Transfiguration).
The addition of a third procession of the Holy Face at the Shrine of Manoppello is not only Trinitarian, it is a deeply significant and public witness of honor paid by the faithful to His Holy Face and thus also to the Holy Name of Jesus! May all of hell tremble at the sight of His Holy Face!
A Hymn composed by Pope Innocent III from the year 1216:
“Sancte Salve Facies”
Procession of Pope Innocent II in 1208 carrying “the Veronica” *Face of Christ (from “Liber Regulae Sancti Spiritus in Saxia” manuscript 1350)
Hail Holy Face of Our Redeemer on which shines the appearance of divine splendor impressed upon a little cloth of snowy radiance and given to Veronica as a standard of love.
Hail beauty of the ages, mirror of the saints, which the spirits of the heavens desire to see. Cleanse us from every stain of sin and guide us to the fellowship of the blessed.
Hail our glory amidst this hard life, so fragile and unstable, quickly passing away. Point us, O happy figure, to the heavenly homeland to see the Face that is Christ indeed.
Hail, O sudarium, noble encased jewel, both our solace and the memorial of Him who assumed a little mortal body–our true joy and ultimate good!
*The precious miniature manuscript “Liber Regulae Sancti Spiritus in Saxia,” was published around 1350 and is preserved in the State Archives in Rome. The illustration at the bottom of the first page of the Liber is one of the oldest illustrations of “the Veronica,” which depicts Pope Innocent III with “the Veronica” in his right hand and the Rule granted to the brothers of the hospital in his left. Prior to the Jubilee of 2000, the French medievalist Jacques Le Goff wrote, “Over the centuries Rome was enriched with notable relics. One in particular acquired an exceptional prestige: the sudarium of Christ known and revered by the name of “the Veronica.” The circumstances by which the image first came to Rome is a mystery but was mentioned for the first time under Pope John VII (705-707)
Hail Holy Face of Jesus, our Redeemer!
Update: The 2024 Novena of the Holy Face will be from Sunday, February 4th to February 12th. The Feast of the Holy Face for 2024 is Tuesday, February 13th. The Novena will be posted each day on the Home Page, which subscribers will receive by email. The Novena may also be found in the Menu above.
May God have pity on us and bless us;may He let his Face shine upon us. So may Your way be known upon earth;among all nations, Your salvation. (Ps. 67:1)
Painting by Margaret Farr
“Our Lady, in whose face – more than any other creature – we can recognize the features of the Incarnate Word.” –Pope Benedict XVI
The Feast of Mary, Mother of God
In God’s beautiful design, the Christmas liturgy continues at the beginning of the New Year by drawing us to the Face of Christ with three holy feast days. All three are tied together by a common, yet golden thread–A mother, sharing her precious Son with us, so we may see His Face.
We begin on January 1, with the Feast of Mary, Mother of God, who teaches us how to contemplate the Face of her Son by seeing the reflection of His beauty and goodness in her face. On the Solemnity of the Mother of God, Pope Francis said, “Begin the year recalling God’s goodness in the maternal face of Mary.” We see Jesus more clearly through His Mother’s eyes, especially when we pray the Rosary.
The first reading for this feast day is the priestly blessing on God’s chosen people from the book of Numbers:
The LORD said to Moses: “Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them: This is how you shall bless the Israelites. Say to them: The LORD bless you and keep you! The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you! The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace! So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites, and I will bless them.” (Num 6:22-27)
May Our Lord grant us His blessing in the New Year through intercession the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. As the Incarnation of the Son of God came into the world by the power of the Holy Spirit, at Mary’s “Fiat,” through her prayers, may we obtain the grace to contemplate His Holy Face, and receive God’s greatest gift of peace.
The next holy feast, on January 3 is…
The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus
In sacred scripture the Angel Gabriel revealed the Holy Name of the Savior of mankind to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “You shall call His name Jesus.”
When Jesus was named, Satan was disarmed!
Mary, Mother of the Most Blessed Sacrament
Pope Benedict XVI had written that the expression “name of God” means God as He Who is present among men. His name, is the concrete sign of His Existence. The Hebrew term, “panim”, which means “face” means to see The Face of God, or the presence of God. “Panim” is a term that describes relationships. The Hebrew word “shem” meaning “name” is also a term of relationship. “Panim” is also the Hebrew word for “Face of God” and the same word is used for “Bread of the Presence” or “Bread of the Face.” (Exodus 25:30) The “Bread of Presence” mentioned in Exodus was not the actual Face of God, but the earthly sign of His Face. The Eucharist, instituted by Christ, however, is the actual Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus. When we are gazing at the Eucharist, the sign of God’s love for us, in Adoration, we see His Holy Face veiled in the appearance of bread, and in doing so, we give honor to His Holy Name.
Who had a more tender relationship of love with Jesus than his mother Mary? Who spoke His name more lovingly? God has a Face and a Name — It is Jesus Christ, our Redeemer! The Blessed Mother invites us to rejoice in the splendor of His Face, and contemplate the mystery of His Holy Name by entering into a relationship with her Son Jesus, especially in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.
“To rejoice in the splendor of His Face means penetrating the mystery of His name made known to us in Jesus, understanding something of His interior life and of His will, so that we can live according to His plan for humanity. Jesus lets us know the hidden Face of The Father through His human Face; by the gift of The Holy Spirit poured into our hearts. This,is the foundation of our peace, which nothing can take from us.” –Pope Benedict XVI
Blessed the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within thee bless His Holy Name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and never forget all He hath done for thee. (Ps. ci. i,2)
And the third great holy day drawing us to adore the Holy Face is…
Christ has appeared to us; come, let us adore Him! Adoration of the Magi, Giotto, 1302
The Feast of the Epiphany
“See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples; But upon you the Lord shines, and over you appears his glory.”
Isaiah 60
The Epiphany is closely linked to the Holy Face, as the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen and mother, presents her Son, the King of Kings, to the Magi–because the Epiphany is the feast on which Jesus Christ first shows Himself to the world represented by the Magi–and He shows Himself through a human face, the face of an infant. On the feast of the Epiphany, we ask God to shine His Face upon us, to reveal His Face to us once more as we come before Him in adoration, so that, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may also reflect the light of His Face to the world.
“All the ends of the earth will behold the salvation of our God.”
Isaiah 52
“May the Lord grant that in the new millennium, the Church will grow ever more in holiness, that she may become in history a true epiphany of the merciful and glorious Face of Christ the Lord.” — Pope St. John Paul II at the Closing of the Holy Door, January 6, 2001
Illumina Domine Blog - Devotion to The Holy Face 