Feast of Corpus Christ

The Sacred Heart is made visible in His Holy Face

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The Holy Face of Manoppello, Italy, and Joachim Cardinal Meisner, 1933-2017. (Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN)

Joachim Cardinal Meisner with Veil of the Holy Face of Manoppello (Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN)
“For God so loved the world”

The late Cardinal Meisner, who had such a deep love and devotion to both the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Holy Face on the relic veil of Manoppello, Italy, expressed the connection between the two images so beautifully when he wrote:

“The Face is the monstrance of the heart. In the Holy Face the heart of God becomes visible.” –Joachim Cardinal Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, April 4, 2005

“The Face is the monstrance of the heart.
In the Holy Face the heart of God becomes visible.”
–Joachim Cardinal Meisner
(Photo: Padde Badde/EWTN)

There are two very important Catholic Feast days in June; the Sacred Heart and Corpus Christi; One celebrating the burning love of Christ for humanity, and the other celebrating reality of His True Presence in the Eucharist. Pope St. John Paul II, who first coined the phrase “Eucharistic Face of Jesus” in referring to the Blessed Sacrament, was pointing to the reality that is hidden by the veil of the Host: Christ is present there, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. And so, when we come before the Eucharist, we stand in God’s Presence; we come before His Holy Face as well as His Most Sacred Heart.

“The Face of Christ is the supreme revelation of Christ’s Mercy.”–Pope Benedict XVI gazing at the Eucharistic Face of Christ. (photo:Paul Badde/EWTN)

Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus is the door through which we are invited to enter and pass, in Faith. In doing so, we are first reminded of His Sacred Humanity, and that the “Word became flesh” at the Incarnation:

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

It is a tremendous gift that is being offered us–to encounter the Person of Our Lord Jesus as we come before His Face. In gratitude for this gift, we can be open to the transformation of our hearts that is wrought by being in the presence of His Most Sacred Heart burning with love for us — even if we are unable to visit the Blessed Sacrament — through His Holy Face–the monstrance of His Heart.

“While we too seek other signs, other wonders, we do not realize that He is the real sign, God made flesh; He is the greatest miracle of the universe: all the love of God hidden in a human heart, in a human Face.” ~ Pope Benedict XVI

The Holy Face of Jesus, is indeed the monstrance of His Heart!

“Christ is the One who looks into our eyes and He wants us to look into His eyes: ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father.’ We are called to see God, we are continually called to look at Christ.”
~Pope St. John Paul II
(Hand holding a Host viewed through the Face on Holy Veil of Manoppello in Italy. Photo: Paul Badde/EWTN)

The Radiant sign of the Face of Christ is Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist

On the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, in 2001, Pope St. John Paul II wrote:

The invisible Face of Christ, the son of God, is manifest in His Body and Blood in the simplest and, at the same time, the most exalted way possible in this world.

The ecclesial community responds to people in every age who ask perplexed: “We wish to see Jesus” (Jn 12,21), by repeating what the Lord did for the disciples of Emmaus: He broke the bread. In the breaking of the bread, the eyes of those who seek Him with a sincere heart are opened. In the Eucharist, the intuition of the heart recognizes Jesus and His unmistakable love lived “to the end” (Jn 13,1). And in Him, in that gesture, it recognizes the Face of God!

— Pope St. John Paul II
Pope John Paul II: “The Eucharist is the great school in which we learn to see The Face of God.” “In The Eucharist, The Face of Christ is turned toward us.”
"Jesu, whom I look at shrouded here below,
I beseech thee send me what I thirst for so,
Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light
And be blest for ever with thy glory’s sight. Amen." 
--Last Stanza of "Adoro Te Devote"
The Virgin of the Host, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

 

“Behold God’s Love For You” – Part One

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Venerable Carlo Acutis

Ven. Carlo Acutis had a profound love of the Eucharist at an early age. Being something of a computer genius, he used his passion and talents to catalog the Eucharistic miracles of the world.  Before he died of leukemia at the age of fifteen, Carlo had researched over 136 Eucharistic miracles that have occurred over the centuries in many countries in the world. He spent two and a half years creating a virtual museum website where others could discover and appreciate God’s greatest Gift of Himself to mankind.

Eucharistic miracles  are extraordinary manifestations of the Lord’s real presence which point to the reality of the Eucharist being the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist was prefigured by the the manna that God gave to Moses, “When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat.'” (Exodus 16:15)The Eucharist was also prefigured by the mysterious “Bread of the Presence” also known as the “Bread of the Face of God”  mentioned in Exodus. The Hebrew word “panim” was commonly rendered as presence, but the literal translation is actually “face.” God commanded Moses to keep three sacred object in the Tabernacle: The Ark of the Covenant, the golden Lampstand, known as the Menorah, and the golden table of the Bread of the Presence — where bread and wine were offered to God. The holy “Bread of the Face” was the visible sign of God’s love for His people. “On special feasts, the golden table of the Bread of the Presence would be brought out for pilgrims to see, and the priests would declare, ‘Behold God’s love for you!'” (Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Dr. Brant Pitre) The mystery of this offering of bread and wine was fulfilled in Jesus Christ as the perfect offering to God in the Eucharist:

St. Pio at the moment of Consecration, when the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world… I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen [me], you do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it [on] the last day.” (John 6:32-39)

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6: 51)

Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, Italy

From then, up to the present, people have found this “a hard saying” (John 16:60) But God — who understands our weakness of faith — has performed  miracles of the Eucharist  that we may believe. One of the most spectacular and rigorously studied by scientists was the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano.  After conducting over 500 tests, the scientists were left baffled and published their amazing findings in 1976 declaring in conclusion that “science, aware of its limits, has come to a halt, face to face with the impossibility of giving an explanation.”  Many of the Eucharistic miracles that have undergone scientific examination have actually found the Host to be “the living tissue of a human heart”  as in the Eucharistic Miracle of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The astounding results of that investigation were presented in 2006 to Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio, who is now Pope Francis.

But as many miracles have pointed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist, others have pointed to the Eucharistic Face of Christ, such as the one which occurred in 1902…

To be continued in “Behold God’s Love for You!” – Part Two

Excellent video of talk by Dr. Brant Pitre on Jesus & the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist — in which he explains the mysterious “Bread of the Face of God” in Exodus.

Mass of St. Gregory, Albrecht Durer, 1511

Detail Mass of St. Gregory the Great, Michael Wolgemut, teacher of Albrecht Durer.