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St. Jude and the Holy Face of Jesus

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Long before the legends of St. Veronica appeared in the Middle Ages, there were other ancient accounts of a miraculous veil bearing the living face of Jesus Christ. And like the story of St. Veronica, there is a very similar and deep meaning. One of these stories was associated with the Apostle St. Jude Thaddeus–the patron saint of impossible causes–who brought healing, restoration, and transformation by means of the Face of Jesus to a king with leprosy…

King Abgar with Veil, Monastery of St. Catherine Sinai, Egypt 8th Century

The Mandylion of Edessa

King Abgar V, (c. 1st century to 50 AD) was known as”the Black” or, as described by a contemporary historian, Tacitus, as “King of the Arabs.” St. John Damascene wrote this regarding “The Mandylion of Edessa,” (which means “towel” or “handkerchief in Arabic. Many versions of this legend may be found in historical sources dating back to 590 A.D.):

“King Abgar suffered from leprosy and hearing of the miracles of Jesus, sent a letter to Jesus with his secretary Ananias.” (Who also happened to be a wonderful painter.)

The king’s letter to Jesus had been recorded and copied many times, and have survived in Syriac, Armenian, and Greek on papyrus, parchment and stone. The text of the letter, and the response of Jesus, essentially read:

Abgar, ruler of Edessa, to Jesus the good physician who appeared in the country of Jerusalem, greeting. I have heard reports of you and of your cures as performed by you without medicines or herbs. For it is said that you make the blind to see and the lame to walk, that you cleanse lepers and cast our impure spirits and demons, and that you heal those afflicted with lingering disease, and raise the dead. And having heard all these things, concerning you, I have concluded that one of two things must be true: either you are God, and having come down from heaven, you do these things, or else you, who does these things, are the son of God. I have therefore written to you to ask you if you would take the trouble to come to me and heal all the ill which I suffer. For I have heard that the Jews are murmuring against you and are plotting to injure you. But I have a very small yet noble city which is great enough for us both.”

Jesus, it was written, gave the messenger the reply to return to Abgar:

Blessed are you who hast believed in me without having seen me. For it is written concerning me, that they who have seen me will not believe in me, and that they who have not seen me will believe and be saved. But in regard to what you have written me, that I should come to you, it is necessary for me to fulfill all things here for which I have been sent, and after I have fulfilled them, thus to be taken up again to him that sent me. But after I have been taken up, I will send to you one of my disciples, that he may heal your disease and give life to you and yours.

“It is said that the King Abgarus of Edessa had sent a painter to make a portrait of Christ. But he was not able to do it because of the light that shone out of the Lord’s Face. So, taking a veil and placing it before his holy and life-giving face, Jesus impressed his image on it and sent it to King Abgarus, thus satisfying his desire.” –St. John Damascene

It was St. Jude Thaddeus, one of Jesus’s seventy-two disciples, who brought the Holy veil to the king. After hearing St. Jude preach, and receiving the holy image, King Abgar was healed of his leprosy. King Abgarus, who brought Christianity to his kingdom, is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Church.

13th Century Surrender of the Mandylion in Constantinople

Arab sources also mention the cloth on which Jesus imprinted the image of His Face. Although there was disagreement over the centuries as to the question of how the image of the living face of Jesus was formed on the cloth, everyone agreed that it was indeed miraculous.

Through the centuries, many reproductions were made of the image, some appearing miraculously on tile that had covered the sacred cloth. The Mandylion was eventually brought to Constantinople, “The Queen of all cities,” on August 16th, 944, which is still celebrated as a feast day in the Eastern calendar. It was recorded as being kept in “a golden vessel,” and only taken out once a year from the Sacred Chapel, where other precious relics of the Passion of Christ were also kept until the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The miraculous healing of the king’s leprosy was brought about through the Holy Face and the intercession of St. Jude. But the story of the “impossible” healing of the horrible, disfiguring disease of leprosy, gives not only hope of healing to the sick, but an even greater hope of spiritual healing, restoration, and transformation of the soul to each sinner in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In that sacrament a repentant sinner, after coming face to face with the Person of Christ through the Priest to confess their sins, may once again have the image of Christ healed, restored, and transformed in their soul. It is an even greater miracle of divine grace: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)

St. Jude Thaddues, Patron Saint of impossible causes, holding the Face of Jesus

The Rosary and Contemplation of the Face of Christ

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When he placed the New Millennium under “the Radiant sign of the Face of Christ” Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “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…It is the Church’s task to reflect the light of Christ in every historical period, to make His Face shine also before new generations of the new millennium. Our witness, however, would be hopelessly inadequate if we ourselves had not first contemplated His Face.”  The Rosary is a traditional Christian prayer directed to the contemplation of Christ’s Face. “Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul,” says Pope St. John Paul II, “and runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ.”

Contemplation is a gift, a grace, from God. It is a communion in which God transforms a soul into His likeness. To put it more simply, as St. Teresa of Jesus says, contemplation is “a close sharing between friends…taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.”  Contemplation is not something beyond our reach however–we have an incomparable model in Mary; the eyes of her heart were always turned toward His Face. To dispose our souls to receive this great gift of God we need only reach for a Rosary and pray it with humility, listening attentively in the Spirit together with Mary, in silent love–that veil of mystery–to the Father’s voice. When we contemplate the scenes or mysteries of the Rosary in union with Mary, the Rosary becomes an unceasing praise of God; a way to learn from her about her son, Jesus, to discover His secrets and understand His message for us.

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To recite the Rosary, which can be called a compendium of the Gospel, Pope St. John Paul II says, “is to contemplate the Face of Christ in union with, and at the school of, His Most Holy Mother…Against the background of the words of the Ave Maria the principal events of the life of Jesus Christ pass before the eyes of the soul. They take shape in the complete series of the joyful, [luminous,] sorrowful and glorious mysteries, and they put us in living communion with Jesus through–we might say through the heart of his Mother…The Rosary belongs among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation…To look upon the Face of Christ, to recognize its mystery amid the daily events and sufferings of His human life, and then to grasp the divine splendor definitively revealed in the Risen Lord, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father; this is the task of every follower of Christ and therefore the task of each one of us. In contemplating Christ’s Face we become open to receiving the mystery of Trinitarian life, experiencing ever anew the love of the Father and delighting in the joy of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul’s words can then be applied to us ‘Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into His likeness, from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.'” (Rosarium Virginus Mariae) 

"The contemplation of Christ's Face cannot stop at the image of the Crucified One. He is the Risen One!"~St. Pope John Paul II
“The contemplation of Christ’s Face cannot stop at the image of the Crucified One. He is the Risen One!”~ Pope St. John Paul II

The entire month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary and October 7th is celebrated as the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The feast, originally named for Our Lady of Victory, commemorated the stunning victory, against all odds, obtained by Our Lady in the Battle of Lepanto through the prayer of the Rosary–which saved Christendom on October 7th, in 1571. By keeping our eyes fixed on the Face of Jesus as we pray the Rosary, together with Mary, through her maternal intercession, we too may obtain great victories through the heart of her Son Jesus, who obtained for all mankind the greatest victory over sin and death by His Resurrection.

“Through her, may we see Him. Made sweeter, not made dim. And her hand leaves His light, sifted to suit our sight.” ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins (Painting of the Blessed Mother and the Child Jesus by Margaret Farr)