Illumina Domine Blog – Devotion to The Holy Face

 

 

“From the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,” “for the author of beauty created them.”  (Wisdom 13: 3, 5)

The spiritual beauty of God is reflected most perfectly in the woman He created to be His Mother.  No stain of sin would mar the beauty of His reflection in her soul. Never for one instant would she be under the power of the devil. “The Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits  of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.” (Dogma of the Immaculate Conception)  Mary herself proclaims, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” (Luke 1:47)

As the Immaculate Conception, Mary bears in herself the most perfect reflection of the face of God.  Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “The Blessed Virgin saw shining upon her, as no other creature, the face of the Father, rich in grace and mercy.”  What in Heaven and on earth could be more beautiful than the Mother of God?  It is God who has willed that Mary be beautiful, not only fair in face, but in the fullness of grace. Yet, beauty has a purpose, and that is to draw us by the beauty of the graces God has given her towards the Beatific Vision–the Face of God.  Mary has no greater desire than that we turn towards the Face of her Son, as she does, with eyes of love.

Strangely, there are some who see the Blessed Mother not as a gift from God who leads us to her Son, but as an obstacle. They want to separate the Mother from the Son, even resorting to violence of smashing statues and slashing paintings of her, mistakenly thinking that somehow this could be pleasing to God, but it is only pleasing to the devil. It is blasphemy. When we separate ourselves from Mary, we separate ourselves from Christ. In The Everlasting Man G.K. Chesterton tells a story from his childhood, many years before he became a Catholic, which left a deep impression on his soul:

“When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.”

Jesus alone is “the Way” that leads to the Father, but Mary is the most beautiful image and likeness of Christ, which will lead us to Him. Dostoevsky once said that “Beauty will save the world!” Mary has a spiritual beauty to share with the world that attracts and expresses what is beyond words, in the depths of her heart, the love of a mother for her Savior and Son.

A Little Litany by G.K.Chesterton

When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven – and saw the earth.

Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
Built you about him for a house of gold
To see in pictured walls his storied world
Return upon him as a tale is told.

Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.

Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In the strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face.

Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.

Or risen from play at your pale raiment’s hem
God, grown adventurous from all time’s repose,
Of your tall body climbed the ivory tower
And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.

For post “Look Closely – Our Lady of Guadalupe – Not Made by Human Hands” click here.