Dear St. Rita Families,
This weekend begins Passiontide, the last two weeks before Easter. Before the Second Vatican Council, the 5th Sunday of Lent was called Passion Sunday, and the following Sunday was Palm Sunday. After the liturgical changes, Passion Sunday was “moved” and conflated with Palm Sunday. However, a beautiful tradition still remains. The Gospel reading for this coming Sunday in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is John 8:46-59. The last lines of the Gospel read, “So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.“ The Jews are looking to execute the demands of the Mosaic Law on Jesus, because they think He has made Himself God (when in fact, He is God), and in typical Jesus fashion, He evades their clutches until the appointed time.
In recognition of Our Lord hiding Himself, Catholic Churches are accustomed to covering the various images and statues with a purple cloth for these last two weeks of Lent. The coverings remind us that nothing can happen without God’s permission, certainly not the Crucifixion of God Himself. They also provide a visual mortification, preparing us for the Death of the Savior. Our Lord’s concealing of Himself likewise is reflective of many aspects of the spiritual life, when we feel little to nothing of God’s presence. The Scripture speaks of this in the Song of Songs in passages such as these: “Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer” (3:1). And, “I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer…I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am sick with love” (5:5-6, 8). St. John of the Cross reflects on these passages and this dynamic in his famous works, “Ascent of Mount Carmel”, “Dark Night of the Soul”, and “Living Flame of Love”.
This weekend, however, you will see that one image remains uncovered, an image that perhaps you are not accustomed to seeing. Where the Divine Mercy image normally rests, you will see an image of the Holy Face of Jesus, but the rest of the images will be covered. The Holy Face image is a representation of the veil of St. Veronica, with which she wiped the Face of Our Lord on the Way of the Cross to Calvary. That veil of St. Veronica is preserved in St. Peter’s Basilica and is displayed annually on the 5th Sunday of Lent, a last glimpse of the Face of God before we enter into Passiontide. The devotion to the Holy Face became very widespread beginning in the mid-19th Century, when Pope Bl. Pius IX had the veil if St. Veronica displayed in January 1849. During this public veneration, the Holy Face on the veil shone with a soft light and appeared living. In the 5 years prior to this event, Sr. Marie of St. Peter, a Carmelite nun from Tours, France, had been receiving interior revelations about reparations to be made to the Holy Face of Jesus for sins against the first three Commandments. From these events, and through the work and devotion of the layman Leo Dupont “the holy man of Tours”, the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus began and spread, eventually becoming the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face. At St. Rita, devotees of the Holy Face meet in the Church at 3 PM on the second Sunday of the month to offer prayers of reparation.
As we prepare more proximately the celebrate Our Lord’s Passion, remember that by your Baptism and Confirmation, you too are given to show forth the Face of Christ. He who is Himself “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) and who has made “His face shine upon us” (Num 6:25) conforms us to His likeness, so that when others see us, they also see the Face of God. And should they persecute us, we remember the words of God to the prophet Samuel, “it is not you they reject, but me” (1 Sam 8:7). The world always wants to hide the Face of God – including in you and me – because it cannot bear to see It: “…the light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19). The ultimate ploy to do so was to murder Him, and they thought they had succeeded. But God only allowed the illusion of victory to persist for a time – 3 days, in fact.
Now, we Christians do not fear the darkness nor the hiding of the Face of Christ, because “the light has shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5). Rather, we move confidently forward, because even if the darkness surrounds us, we have the Light of Christ. He has made us “the light of the world” (Mt 5:14) because we carry Him who is “the light of the world” (Jn 9:5) in our hearts, we proclaim Him in our words, we testify to Him in our actions, and we are united to Him in our prayer and the Sacraments. And even though the world tries to snuff out our witness, they can only kill the body; they cannot kill the soul (Mt 10:28).
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen