The History and Practice of Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus

We are blessed as Catholics to have at our disposal so many different pious exercises which we may practice to help nourish our spiritual life. Among the well-known devotions honouring Our Lord’s Passion – such as the Stations of the Cross, the meditation of the Seven Last Words, or the Tre Ore devotion – one in particular is perhaps not as well-known as it ought to be: devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

Devotion to the Holy Face is essentially a devotion of reparation; by honouring Our Saviour’s sacred countenance, disfigured and abused during His Sacred Passion, we seek to console and repay Him the outrages and blows His human face received on Good Friday. Furthermore, we seek to expiate the many sins of men – particularly those of blasphemy against the Holy Name of Jesus, and the violation of Sundays – by which Our Lord is continually offended.

Veronica’s Veil

When we make the Way of the Cross, we stop at the Sixth Station to contemplate the pious woman St. Veronica courageously holding out her veil to wipe the spittle, sweat and blood from Our Lord’s face as He bore His Cross to Mount Calvary. Tradition tells us that after Christ’s Ascension, Veronica brought her veil (bearing the impression of Our Saviour’s countenance) to Rome, where it made its way into the hands of Pope St. Clement I. This precious relic of the Passion was kept hidden in the catacombs during the years of violent Christian persecution which marked the early life of the Church. The veil was eventually put in a reliquary, and kept (where it remains to this day) in St. Peter’s Basilica alongside other relics of the Passion. Over the centuries, the Popes would only occasionally expose Veronica’s Veil to the public veneration of the faithful. Miracles and cures of all sorts showed Heaven was pleased with the honour being given the relic.

Our Lord Appears to Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre

“Soeur Marie de Saint-Pierre et de la Sainte Famille” (1816-1848) was a cloistered Carmelite nun lived in Tours, France when Our Lord appeared to her during a storm the 26th of August 1843. Our Lord impressed upon Sister Marie His sorrow and outrage at sins committed against His Holy Name, complaining to her: “My Name is everywhere blasphemed! There are even children who blaspheme!” Sister Marie writes in her autobiography, The Golden Arrow:  “Our Lord made me visualise the act of blasphemy as a poisoned arrow continually wounding His Divine Heart. After that, He revealed to me that He wanted to give me a ‘Golden Arrow’ which would have the power of wounding Him delightfully, and which would also heal those other wounds inflicted by the malice of sinners.”

The prayer Our Lord taught her is as follows:

“May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and unutterable Name of God be always praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in Heaven, on earth, and in the hells, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.”

Our Lord made to Sister Marie nine “promises” in favour of those persons who practice devotion to His Holy Face – among them: conversion and mercy for poor sinners, and final perseverance at the hour of death.

 In 1844, Our Lord went on to request reparation for the profanation of Sundays. On 5 January 1846, Sister Marie wrote furthermore: “…this work of reparation included not only reparation for what is called blasphemy … but also embraced reparation for all of the attacks against Religion and Holy Church, since these also constitute a form of blasphemy.” In October of the same year, Our Lord revealed that Divine Justice would choose as its instrument of chastisement “…the malice of revolutionary men – that is, the Communists.” With the help of a lay benefactor of the Carmel – Monsieur Léon Papin-Dupont – an Oratory of the Holy Face was opened in Tours, and the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face officially approved and established by Pope Leo XIII on the first of October 1885.

Sister Maria Pierina de Michela

Closer to our own times, Our Lord also appeared to an Italian religious: Sister Maria Pierina (1890-1945) of the Daughters of the Immaculate Conception of Buenos Aires. In the late 1930’s, Christ re-iterated to her His request for reparation, asking her to have struck a “Medal of the Holy Face”. With the approval of her spiritual director, Sister Maria Pierina spread the medal to those around her; it went on to gain popularity throughout the whole world. Our Lord’s private locutions to Sister Maria Pierina were approved by the Church under Pope Pius XII.

The Practice of Devotion to the Holy Face

Someone who feels moved to respond to Our Lord’s repeated requests for reparation might wonder how to go about putting this important devotion into practice. Certainly, one must begin by renouncing those sins which so hurt Our Lord: blasphemy (various ways of improperly using of God’s Name) and disrespect of Sundays and Holy Days (such as Sunday shopping, or performing unnecessary servile work on the Lord’s Day). One should resolve never more to commit these sins oneself, and to do what one can to avoid them being committed by others.

Furthermore, one may wish to recite any of the various prayers of reparation which exist (such as the Golden Arrow Prayer mentioned above, or the Litany of the Holy Face approved and indulgenced by the Bishop of Tours) – many of which may be found in Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre’s autobiography, The Golden Arrow, published by Tan Books. Special prayers or visits to the Blessed Sacrament could be offered – especially on Sundays and Holy Days – to repair for sin. Tuesday is also a day on which the Holy Face is particularly honoured. One could annually observe the Feast of the Holy Face (not celebrated in the Universal Church, but only in some dioceses and congregations), kept on Quinquagesima or Shrove Tuesday – the day before Ash Wednesday.