Veil of the Holy Face

Restoring the Image of God in Our Souls

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+Prayer for liberation from the Coronavirus by Archbishop Bruno Forte click here.

“Il Volto Santo” The Holy Face of Manoppello. (Photo by Paul Badde/EWTN)

Contemplate the Face of Jesus in His Passion

“There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him; nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity. One of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.” (Isaiah 53:2-3)

(Detail) painting by Hans Holbein the elder.

The sins of humanity against the Face of God are related to the first three commandments: Idolatry, blasphemy, profanation of the Holy Name and of the Holy Day of Sunday. 

Mankind has turned from the Face of God and toward idols. We have turned away from the Face of God by blaspheming Him, destroying other human beings made in His image, and using God’s life-giving Name as a curse. We have rejected Him on the one day out of seven that He has given us to rest, and a spend time with Him. Like Jesus’s  tormentors in His Passion, humanity has blindfolded Jesus; striking Him, and spitting in His Face; while at the same time, refusing to look upon Him who is the Truth. 

While we cannot change the whole of humanity, we can begin with ourselves. God looks at our souls; broken, disfigured, and in various states of decay. When we “turn back to His Face,” the Divine Artist looks on us with love and restores His image in us.

Our Lord revealed the work of reparation, which is devotion to the Holy Face, “the most beautiful work under the sun,” to Sr. Marie St. Pierre, a Carmelite nun.  Jesus told her that the image of His Holy Face is like a Divine stamp, which, if applied to souls through prayer, has the power of imprinting anew within them the image of God.

This is Sr. Marie St. Pierre’s beautiful prayer to reproduce the image of God in our souls,

“I salute you!  I adore you and I love you, Oh adorable Face of my beloved Jesus, as the noble stamp of the Divinity!  Completely surrendering my soul to You, I most humbly beg You to stamp this seal upon us all, so that the image of God may once more be reproduced in our souls.  Amen.”

 

Miraculous Veil, the “Vera Icon” or True Image of the”Holy Face of Manoppello” in Italy Photo:Paul Badde/EWTN

“St. Veronica”

“St. Veronica,” refers to an unknown woman, not mentioned in the Bible, yet immortalized in every Catholic church at the Sixth Station of the Cross, for her act of compassion to Jesus who left the image of His Face on her veil.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote this beautiful meditation on St. Veronica in 2000, the same year in which he dedicated the millennium to the Face of Christ:

Sixth Station, St. Theresa Church, Ashburn, Virginia

“Veronica does not appear in the Gospels. Her name is not mentioned, even though the names of other women who accompanied Jesus do appear.
It is possible, therefore, that the name refers more to what the woman did. In fact, according to tradition, on the road to Calvary a woman pushed her way through the soldiers escorting Jesus and with a veil wiped the sweat and blood from the Lord’s face. That face remained imprinted on the veil, a faithful reflection, a “true icon”. This would be the reason for the name Veronica.
If this is so, the name which evokes the memory of what this woman did carries with it the deepest truth about her.

One day, Jesus drew the criticism of onlookers when he defended a sinful woman who had poured perfumed oil on his feet and dried them with her hair. To those who objected, he replied: “Why do you trouble this woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me . . . In pouring this ointment on my body she has done it to prepare me for burial” (Mt 26:10, 12). These words could likewise be applied to Veronica. Thus we see the profound eloquence of this event.

The Redeemer of the world presents Veronica with an authentic image of his face. The veil upon which the face of Christ remains imprinted becomes a message for us.
In a certain sense it says: This is how every act of goodness, every gesture of true love toward’s one’s neighbor, strengthens the likeness of the Redeemer of the world in the one who acts that way. Acts of love do not pass away. Every act of goodness, of understanding, of service leaves on people’s hearts an indelible imprint and makes us ever more like the One who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7). This is what shapes our identity and gives us our true name.”

This is the deep meaning and call to every Christian revealed in the presence of the unknown woman we call “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.

Prayer of St. Alphonsus Liguori, from the Sixth Station of the Cross:

My most beloved Jesus, Thy Face was beautiful before, but in this journey it has lost all it’s beauty, and wounds and blood have disfigured it. Alas, my soul also was once beautiful, when it received Thy grace in Baptism; but I have disfigured it by my sins; Thou alone, my Redeemer, can restore it to its former beauty. Do this by Thy Passion, O Jesus.

When we turn to His Face, in prayer, and by acts love and service to our neighbor, He is beautifying and restoring our own souls.

The Holy Face of Manoppello- photo: Paul Badde/EWTN

 

The Shroud of Turin will be displayed via live stream on Holy Saturday: Information here.

Beautiful video also airing on EWTN — from Vaticano — “The Face of God:”

Fr. John Paul Mary, MFVA – homily April 3, 2020

 

Four Stories – One Face, Part 1

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Byzantine iconoclasm 9th Century
Byzantine iconoclasm 9th Century

There are at least four separate historical accounts of a veil or cloth of miraculous origin, “not made by human hands,” bearing an image of the Face of Jesus Christ. Each account relates, in its own way, that the Sacred Image came into contact with the living Face of Jesus. Human nature, being what it is, has altered the story, over the centuries, like the old game of “telephone” where one child whispers a story to the first child in line and by the time it has reached the last child the narrative has become very different.

Humanity has journeyed through millennia of dangers, persecution, wars, and intrigue since Christ walked on the earth (and on water), which obscured the facts of the origin of the Holy Veil of the Face of Jesus. The stories of the Veil were handed down to us today by way of history, tradition, literature, art, and music. Somewhere within these intertwined stories is the truth, but, one must have the humility to acknowledge before such a great mystery that we don’t know the whole of the story because God, whose “ways are not our ways,” has allowed them to be hidden.

There are many clues (read anything written about the Holy Face by Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI or Pope Francis to find those clues) as to why the Holy Face is taking such a prominent role at this particular point in history to draw humanity back out of the abyss of darkness it now finds itself submerged in. It seems that God, in His Mercy, is “drawing back the veil,” in these dark days, allowing facts to come to light. The four stories point us to one image in particular.

To begin, each are said to depict the Face of the living Christ on a sheer veil or cloth–a human face of a man who has suffered, with traces of wounds, bruises, and swelling visible, especially on the left cheek. His wavy hair is long and parted with a small, short lock of curls at the center. His beard is sparse as though torn, and divided in two. cropped-image-14-version-2.jpegHis open eyes are peaceful and looking slightly to one side. His mouth is partially opened. The images each were reported to have been miraculous not only in appearance, but also as an instrument of healing.

1024px-heinrich_kiepert-_asia_citerior-cappadociaThe Camulia-The oldest story of such an image is the Camulia—named for where it was found, the town of Kamuliana, in Cappodocia, Turkey. The story is of a pagan woman name Hypatia who was receiving Christian instruction and had difficulty believing in Jesus unless she could see Him. “How can I worship Him when He is not visible and I cannot see Him?” She asked. One day she drew from the water of a well, a cloth, with His Holy Face. She became a believer from that moment on. Although there is no longer any trace in art history of the Camulia, the image was described by Theophylactus Simocattus as “the image of the God incarnate…said since ancient times and to the present day that divine art created it, that it was not produced either by a weaver’s hands nor was it painted by the colors of a painter.” The Camulia was cited as a historical image during the iconoclast war against sacred images. During the second council of Nicaea in 787, a deacon named Cosmos demonstrated how the iconoclasts wanted to destroy evidence of testimony of the Eastern Fathers in favor of images of the Face of Jesus. He held up a martyrology from which pages of the story of the Camulia had been ripped out. That was the last mention of the Camulia in history. (source)

The history of the Camulia overlaps with another historical narrative, also originating in Turkey, of an image of the Face of Christ–The Mandylion of Edessa– which will be continued in the next post, “Four Stories – One Face, Part 2.”

Book Sources: True Icon: From the Shroud of Turin to the Veil of Manoppello, The Rediscovered Face, the Unmistakeable Features of Christ and Witnesses to Mystery, Investigations into Christ’s Relics