A Carmelite Before the Holy Face of Jesus: Part II

By: Mother Mary Baptist and The Carmelite Sisters of the Monastery of Our Mother of Mercy and St. Joseph

To Be a Prayer Before Thy Mystery:

Holy Face as the Object of Devotion for the Work of Reparation

It was a hundred eighty years ago on October 11, 1845, that Our Lord gave to Sr. Mary St. Peter His Holy Face in the Veil of Veronica as the visible object of devotion for the Work of Reparation He had entrusted to her.  The date was destined to become the feast of Mary’s Divine Maternity and how fitting – Our Lady as His Mother was the first to see and venerate His Holy Face!  As Pope St. John Paul II says in Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002): “The contemplation of Christ has an incomparable model in Mary.  In a unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary.  It was in her womb that Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which points to an even greater spiritual closeness.”  One of the many beautiful promises He made surrounding this devotion to His Holy Face was “This adorable Face is, as it were, the seal of the Divinity, which has the virtue of reproducing the likeness of God in the souls that are applied to It.”

In 1847, an Archconfraternity of Reparation was started in Langres, France, and, nearing her own death, Sr. Mary St. Peter rejoiced in it, thinking her work was done.  Yet while its aim was reparation for blasphemies and profanation of Sunday, it lacked the divinely given object of devotion, the Holy Face.  Aggregated to this Archconfraternity in Langres, a Confraternity of Reparation – with the addition of the Holy Face devotion – would be erected in Tours in 1876, but it was not an Archconfraternity in its own right as requested by Our Lord.  The step towards this was the founding of the Confraternity of the Holy Face in Tours on October 25, 1884 which drew many to join, including St. Therese and her father and sisters in April of 1885, three years before her own entrance into Carmel.  In the process towards her canonization, St. Therese’s sisters would testify that devotion to the Holy Face underlined all her other devotions – He was her Sun, her Light.  “Jesus, You are the Star that leads me on; You know that Your dear Face is my Heaven here below.” (St. Therese)  She would later add the Holy Face to her religious title and be known as Sr. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, O.C.D.

In apostolical letters of December 9, 1884, and March 30, 1885, Pope Leo XIII had granted the Confraternity of the Holy Face in Tours many indulgences, plenary and partial.  Other cities around the world started similar confraternities, but did not enjoy the same privileges.  In honoring the sorrowful Face of Our Savior, their purpose was that of hindering, or at least repairing the inexpressible outrages which blasphemers, free thinkers and freemasons inflict on the majesty and sovereignty of God, on the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the authority of the Church.  On September 1, 1885, five months after St. Therese had joined the Confraternity, a petition was sent to Pope Leo XIII by Reverend Abbé Javier, one of the Priests of the Holy Face in Tours, requesting that the Confraternity in Tours be raised to an Archconfraternity, so that by formally aggregating themselves with it, other confraternities could receive the same indulgences.  This petition was recommended by the signature of Most Reverend Guillaume Meignan, Archbishop of Tours, along with that of Cardinals and bishops the world over.  A month later, on October 1, 1885, Pope Leo XIII raised the Confraternity of the Holy Face in Tours to the status of an Archconfraternity “for the whole world and not just for France.”  This unexpected, quick turn of events was announced with joy by Archbishop Meignan to his archdiocese on October 15, 1885, the feast of Our Holy Mother, St. Teresa of Jesus!

Lord, show us Your Face and we shall be saved (Daily aspiration of the members of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face).

Whether praying it or making the Chaplets themselves for our monastery gift shop, the Chaplet of the Holy Face is also a favorite with the Sisters here.  The Holy Face Chaplet has for its object the honoring of the five senses of Our Lord, which have their seat principally in the Holy Face, and of rendering homage to all the sufferings which He endured on His Face, through each one of these senses.  Through it, one also entreats God for the triumph of His Church and the downfall of Her enemies.  Powerful invocations, drawn from Scripture, make up the prayers of this beautiful Chaplet so pleasing to Our Lord.

Several images of Veronica’s Veil adorn the walls of our Monastery in addition to the bronze one mentioned at the start of this article.  Yet we look forward to the building of our Chapel of the Holy Face of Jesus, consecrated to the glory of His Majesty, with His authenticated image offered there for the veneration of the faithful.  With the permission of the Vatican, copies of the Holy Face made on linen or silk have been touched to Veronica’s Veil, the True Wood of the Cross, and the Lance that pierced Christ’s side.  These are then stamped with a waxen seal and marked GRATIS, accompanied by certificates of authenticity verifying that the images had been touched to the blood of Christ through the three instruments of Our Lord’s Passion.  In a relic class of their own, they are considered “Living Images of Jesus Christ.”  Marked “True Effigies of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” they are called “Veronicas,” i.e. “true icons.”  One of these will be enshrined in the new Chapel.

Meanwhile, we await the day when the Confraternity of the Holy Face is canonically erected in our Monastery by our Diocesan Bishop.  Hopefully it will be soon, as the newly appointed Rector of the Archconfraternity in Tours just contacted us on October 22, 2025, to tell us that he desires that the first Confraternity he assists a Bishop to establish would be in our Monastery!  We will be properly aggregated to the Archconfraternity in Tours and can thus begin to receive the names of those desiring to join the Confraternity here at our Carmel.  This happy news arrived not only on the octave of the feast of Our Holy Mother St. Teresa, but also on the feast of Pope St. John Paul II, a Third Order Carmelite and a great lover of the Face of Christ!

In his apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (January 6, 2001 – 152 years after the Miracle in the Vatican, Epiphany of the Holy Face), St. John Paul II has a whole section dedicated to the Face of Christ, with a subdivision particularly given to the suffering Face of Jesus.  While the devotion to the Holy Face such as we have shared here is not mentioned per se, His Holiness emphatically says if we ask what is the core of the great legacy it [the celebration of Jubilee 2000] leaves us, I would not hesitate to describe it as the contemplation of the face of Christ.”  And this contemplation is to be done with Mary, especially in the Rosary, the Pope explains in Rosarium Virginis Mariae (October 16, 2002): No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary.”  Continuing with Novo Millennio Ineunte: “…men and women of our own day — often perhaps unconsciously — ask believers not only to “speak” of Christ, but in a certain sense to “show” Him to them. And is it not 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…as we go back to our ordinary routine, storing in our hearts the treasures of this very special time, our gaze is more than ever firmly set on the face of the Lord.”

God will help her with His countenance.  God dwells in her, she shall not be moved.
God chose her and set her apart. He makes her dwell in His tent (Brief Response at Sext – Common of Virgins, 1962 Breviary).

The Homily for the Memorial of the Transverberation of St. Teresa of Jesus (given by Deacon Br. Pier Giorgio of Christ the King, O.C.D., on the occasion of the clothing Mass of a Discalced Carmelite nun) states that:

This is the vocation of a daughter of St. Teresa, to have your daily life pierced by the presence of God, to receive this presence in peace and then bear witness to the peace of Jesus; To be lighted by God and so be a light for this world.

Lamps of love before His Holy Face…Though we are unseen, our cloister reminds others that there is a God and that there is another life which is eternal.  By our lives as Carmelite Nuns, we witness to our brothers and sisters in a world that hungers for the peace it cannot give itself:  Christ is our Peace.  We cannot simply “grow accustomed to His Face,” that Face which will enthrall us for all eternity, a never-ending source of discoveries in the “deep caverns of His Love,” to echo Our Holy Father St. John of the Cross.  Why not begin our Heaven now, as St. Therese did, and seriously embrace devotion to His Holy Face?

Let us glory in His Holy Name;
let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
Reflect upon the Lord and His power,
Seek His Face evermore (Psalm 105 (104):3-4).