The Holy Face of Christ and the Work of Reparation Episode IV

The Moment of Entrustment

We have now seen the formation of the soul. What remains is the moment when something is entrusted to it.

That moment does not arrive in isolation. It emerges within the ordinary life of the convent. The community at Tours was occupied with practical concerns, including the construction of a new convent. The question of material resources was immediate and pressing.

It is within that context that the first clear intervention occurs.

While praying for the needs of the community, she received an interior communication. The Lord made it known that what was needed first was not a material foundation, but something more fundamental. The ground of the soul was to be laid before the stones of the building could be supplied. The stones, she later understood, were not material, but the prayers of reparation that would rise from the cloister.¹

On August 26, 1843, the work itself was communicated to her in a direct way. It concerned reparation for blasphemy, offered for the glory of the Holy Name of God. This was not presented as a general call to piety. It was a specific work, precise in its object and intention.²

Her first response was ordered and correct. She wrote down what she had received and brought it to her superiors.

What followed is essential.

She was forbidden to occupy herself with it. She was told not to think about it. Even the prayers that had been communicated were taken from her.³ The judgment was that such matters should not be pursued. She submitted entirely.

This is the test.

The work did not advance outwardly. It was restrained. Yet inwardly, it did not disappear. She describes it as a fire within her, a strong desire to speak and to make it known, but she remained silent.⁴ She continued to write what she received, but only under obedience, and often only after prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.⁴

This tension is not incidental. It is part of the purification of the mission itself.

Then something occurred that did not depend on her.

While speaking with the Reverend Mother, a small pamphlet fell from a book. Neither had been aware of it. When examined, it contained a call to reparation for blasphemy against the Holy Name of God, corresponding closely to what she had received interiorly.⁵

The pamphlet had been published years earlier, connected to a prior Carmelite movement of reparation. What had been received in silence was now confirmed externally.

This changed the situation.

At the same time, the wider Church was also moving. In that same period, Pope Gregory XVI had authorized a confraternity of reparation for blasphemy in Rome.⁶ The work at Tours was not isolated. It stood within a broader movement in the life of the Church.

The work was then extended. It was not limited to blasphemy alone, but included the profanation of the Lord’s Day. Both were understood as grave offenses, and both called forth a response.⁶

What we see here is not a sudden or untested revelation. It emerges within obedience, is restrained by authority, is confirmed from outside, and aligns with the life of the Church.

The soul has been formed. It has been corrected, tested, and made obedient. Only then is something entrusted to it.

The response is no longer only interior. It has been named. It has been given form. It is now ready to enter into the life of the Church.

Sara Remarks

Yeah, it is that element of silent obedience, I think, that is a profound part of this particular devotion. And maybe because, you know, all of the images that we possess, that silence is going to be a fundamental element of the engagement that we are going to have with our Lord.

But He works through matter, right. Through things that you do not think are going to necessarily be confirmed. You think that you are going to be the one who has to be that outward messenger. And in this case, she was. She was obedient to Him first, but then she was secondarily obedient to the people that He had put in authority over her, so that she did not have to confirm herself, but He, in fact, confirmed it for her.

And I think that there is just a real elegance in the way that the Church works, both on the macro scale and the micro scale. And we see that in a lot of these visions. The Church will be proposing something as a macro belief for all to know about.

And remember, this is at a time where information like that is not, I mean, we live in a world where the Pope says something and three and a half seconds later I can know what he said. That is just unheard of in terms of the history of the Church. And I actually think it is going to prove to be a detriment to its mission.

But in these instances, the Church is proclaiming something on a macro level, that there is going to be a time, we need a time of reparation. We need to prevent these blasphemies and these profanations that are going on.

Well, in her tiny little Carmel, where she is a cloistered nun, there is no way that information from the Church at the macro level could have been dispersed to her at the micro level, except through the intervention of the Holy Spirit.

And we see that also with Adèle Brise, and with Bernadette Soubirous, where Saint Bernadette is being told about the name of Our Lady as the Immaculate Conception, and Adèle Brise is introduced to Our Lady as the Queen of Heaven. And these things have not yet, even there, reached the macro level of the Church.

That micro element precedes the Church actually making that authentic definition of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother and her Queenship for many years after that.

But there is this beautiful interweaving that we see going on between this message that is being received by Sister Mary of St. Peter personally from Christ, and it being amplified at the same time by the See of Saint Peter.

There is a real harmony there. And that is what I was saying before, in one of those earlier episodes, where we can have such confidence in this particular devotion to the Holy Face, because it was so tried and tested.

And you are going to go on even more to talk about how, probably after her death, there is going to be a suppression again. That is true, that is true.

Closing Remark

The pattern is now clear.

The response to God does not begin with action. It begins with formation. It is purified through obedience. Only then is it entrusted and given outward form.

The question is not whether this belongs to the past. The question is whether the same response will be made now.

It does not begin with something complex. It begins with something deliberate.

You can take a moment and offer this prayer, slowly and intentionally:

O Eternal Father, since it has pleased our Divine Saviour to reveal to mankind in our present century the power residing in His Holy Face, we now avail ourselves of this treasure in our great needs. Since our Saviour Himself promised that by offering to You, O Eternal Father, the Holy Face disfigured in the Passion, we can procure the settlement of all the affairs of our household, and that nothing whatsoever will be refused us, we now come before Your throne.

Offering to You, O God, this adorable Countenance, disfigured with painful bruises and covered with shame and confusion, we beg through the merits of this Holy Face to obtain these our most pressing needs.

Grant us pardon, Eternal Father, for the worst crimes of our age, which are atheism, blasphemy, and the desecration of Your holy days.

Avert from us destruction by war and its consequences. May this offering of the Holy Face of our Saviour before Your throne obtain for us deliverance from these evils.

Send us, O God, zealous and enlightened laborers, that by their prayers, their works, and their sacrifices, they may spread the blessings of Your Church and confound Your enemies. Amen.⁷

Notes

1. Dorothy Scallan, ed.,The Golden Arrow: The Autobiography and Revelations of Sister Mary of St. Peter (1816–1848) on Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, trans. Fr. Emeric B. Scallan, S.T.B. (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2012), 77.
2. Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 77–79.
3. Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 79.
4. Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 79–80.
5. Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 80.
6. Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 81.
7. Scallan,The Golden Arrow, 229.