Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Shrove Tuesday

Shrove Tuesday is the feast of the Holy Face of Jesus. Don Marco has some excellent meditations on this beautiful devotion.

The image to the left is the representation of the imprint of Our Lord's face on the Veronica veil, as it is venerated in the Carmelite Order, and propagated by Sister Marie de Saint Pierre and Venerable Leo Dupont.

Here is the prayer of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux to the Holy Face:
O Jesus, who in Thy bitter Passion didst become "the most abject of men, a man of sorrows," I venerate Thy Sacred Face whereon there once did shine the beauty and sweetness of the Godhead; but now it has become for me as if it were the face of a leper! Nevertheless, under those disfigured features, I recognize Thy infinite Love and I am consumed with the desire to love Thee and make Thee loved by all men. The tears which well up abundantly in Thy sacred eyes appear to me as so many precious pearls that I love to gather up, in order to purchase the souls of poor sinners by means of their infinite value. O Jesus, whose adorable Face ravishes my heart, I implore Thee to fix deep within me Thy divine image and to set me on fire with Thy Love, that I may be found worthy to come to the contemplation of Thy glorious Face in Heaven. Amen.
Here is a formula from the ancient Ambrosian liturgy, as quoted by Abbot Gueranger in The Liturgical Year for Shrove Tuesday:
Sweet is this present life, but it passes away; terrible, O Christ is thy judgment, and it endures forever. Let us, therefore, cease to love what is unstable, and fix our thought on what is eternal: saying: Christ, have mercy upon us!
Now the time has come to go into the desert, the desert of Lent.
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4 comments:

Lucy said...

Thank you for this beautiful prayer, this morning.

Juan said...

It is a remarkable coincidence that you should post this today as it is the exact 50th anniversary of the death of Souer Genevieve de la Sainte Face (Celine Martin), the elder sister of St. Therese of Lisieux. Celine was a competent artist and she produced a remarkable image of the Holy Face circa 1900 based on the Shroud of Turin. It was a very well known religious image of the first half of the 20th century. Therese herself introduced her sister to the Holy Face of Jesus as a focus of devotion. Therese's name in religion was, of course, Sr. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

Anonymous said...

I pray you have a blessed and fruitful Lenten season.

Passages to the Past said...

What a beautiful prayer! Thank you for sharing!