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

Discernment, Timing, and the Church

We have now seen the moment in which a work is entrusted. It was not sought. It was not constructed. It was given, and it was given in a way that was precise and direct.

Before moving forward, it is necessary to understand what we are looking at and how the Church receives something of this kind.

What was given to Sister Mary of St. Peter belongs to what the Church calls private revelation. It does not belong to the deposit of faith. It is not required for belief, and it does not add anything to what has already been revealed in Christ. At the same time, it is not dismissed. It is received cautiously, tested, and, when appropriate, permitted to assist the faithful in a particular time and circumstance.

This testing is not abstract. It is concrete. It passes through obedience, through time, and through conformity with what the Church already teaches.

We have already seen this in her life.

When the work of reparation was first communicated to her, she did not act on it freely. She wrote it down and submitted it to her superiors. They forbade her to occupy herself with it. They removed the prayers and instructed her not to think about the matter.¹ She did not resist. She obeyed.

This is the first point of discernment. The work remains under obedience.

At the same time, the interior experience did not disappear. She describes it as something that remained within her with intensity, like a fire that could not be expressed outwardly.² There was a desire to speak, but that desire was governed by obedience. She continued to write what she received and to present it only under authority.²

The second point appears in the timing.

France had undergone a profound transformation. The Revolution had weakened the visible structure of the Church and introduced a way of thinking that no longer took God as its reference point. Irreverence, particularly in speech, had become more common. Blasphemy was no longer unthinkable. It was becoming ordinary.

The response that was given corresponds directly to that condition. It is not general. It is directed toward a specific offense. The work of reparation for blasphemy addresses the condition in which it appears.

This leads to the question of why it was entrusted to her.

Nothing in her life suggests that she was chosen for influence or visibility. She was not placed in a position of authority. She did not possess a public voice. What we see instead is a soul that has been formed through correction, struggle, and obedience. She had experienced scruples and had been freed from them through submission. She had endured poor spiritual direction and had been restored through perseverance. She had desired religious life and had been required to wait. She had been tested.

What is entrusted to her is given to a soul that has already learned not to act on its own.

A further point of discernment appears in the form of external confirmation.

At a certain moment, a pamphlet fell unexpectedly into the hands of the Reverend Mother. It contained a call to reparation for blasphemy against the Holy Name of God, expressed in language and urgency that closely matched what had been communicated to her.³ The pamphlet had been published years earlier and was connected to a prior Carmelite movement of reparation.

This shows that what she received was not isolated. It had appeared before. It was now reappearing in a new moment.

At the same time, the Church was already moving. In that same period, August of 1843, Pope Gregory XVI authorized a confraternity of reparation for blasphemy in Rome.⁴ This does not identify her experience with that movement, but it shows that the concern was present within the life of the Church.

There is one further clarification.

The work of reparation was not limited to blasphemy alone. It included the profanation of the Lord’s Day.⁵ Both were understood as grave offenses. Both called for a response. The work is therefore precise but not narrow.

When these elements are considered together, a pattern becomes visible.

The world moves away from God. A response is given that corresponds to the need. The response is restrained, tested, and examined. It is confirmed, both by prior witness and by the life of the Church. Only then does it begin to take shape.

This is not an isolated event. It is the beginning of something that will appear again.

Sara Remarks

I mean, that kind of goes along with what we were saying before, that you have this beautiful weaving of the tapestry, the large threads and the small threads coming together in the Church, a teaching which is grounded both in the magisterium of the Church, that is given the authority to instruct, and in the little soul who receives these personal locutions from Christ, instructing her independent of that magisterium.

Not in opposition to one another, but really as a manner of being able to confirm all of us in our faith, because this is obviously an element that was close to the heart of the Church, and one that needed to be attended to given the state of the world.

We have never really recovered from this time period. We are still struggling mightily in the aftermath of this essentially communist revolution that began to undermine the Church, and really feels like, at certain points today, that it is succeeding.

We know that it will not triumph. We know that our Lord’s Sacred Heart is going to triumph, that Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart is going to triumph. But there are many reparations that are required of us because our Lord and Our Lady are so gravely offended by so many sins.

And this beautiful image is really a profound invitation from God to gaze upon Him, to see the Man that we have wounded, who still looks upon us with a heart.

We have so much that we ought to be saying sorry for, even if it is not a personal sin, so much that we can do for those who do not even know that they are offending someone.

Very true.

Closing Remarks

The pattern we have seen is not confined to one moment.

The response to God is not driven by urgency or personal initiative. It is formed through obedience, tested over time, and aligned with what the Church already knows to be true.

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

It begins in a simple way. It begins with something deliberate that is offered.

Within this devotion, Our Lord did not only call for reparation. He also attached specific promises to those who would honor His Holy Face and take up this work.

Listen carefully to what is claimed:

All those who honor My Face in a spirit of reparation will by so doing perform the office of the pious Veronica. According to the care they take in making reparation to My Face disfigured by blasphemers, so will I take care of their souls which have been disfigured by sin. My Face is the seal of the Divinity, which has the virtue of reproducing in souls the image of God.

Those who by words, prayers, or writings defend My cause in this Work of Reparation I will defend before My Father, and will give them My Kingdom.

By offering My Face to My Eternal Father, nothing will be refused, and the conversion of many sinners will be obtained.

By My Holy Face, they will work wonders, appease the anger of God, and draw down mercy on sinners.

As in a kingdom they can procure all that is desired with a coin stamped with the king’s effigy, so in the Kingdom of Heaven they will obtain all they desire with the precious coin of My Holy Face.

Those who on earth contemplate the wounds of My Face shall in Heaven behold it radiant with glory.

They will receive in their souls a bright and constant irradiation of My Divinity, that by their likeness to My Face they shall shine with particular splendor in Heaven.

I will defend them, I will preserve them, and I assure them of final perseverance.⁶

This is not sentiment. It is not general encouragement.

It is a defined claim about what follows from a defined response.

The question is whether that response will be made.

Sara Remarks

I think that that goes back to what I was saying before, at the very beginning, that engagement with our Lord is not esoteric. There is a concrete weight that is attached to this relationship that we are engaged in.

And these promises are not just pie-in-the-sky ideas. I think that we oftentimes really disconnect ourselves from that fact. We become very complacent in our own arrogance, particularly in the modern world where we do not really go to a church anymore. Obviously people will go to church, but in general, we are going to a church that reflects ourselves. We are no longer seeking out truth per se. We are seeking out churches that confirm us in whatever truth we are living in.

And so we become very jaded. It is as though we are becoming very short-sighted, and we do not really believe that we have done anything that is bad enough to merit an eternal punishment.

And yet the reality is that man put his own God to death. Even if that is the only thing that humanity has done collectively, to put the Savior to death on a cross, none of us after that would merit anything but the worst eternal punishment.

So these promises, particularly the one that always gives me such great hope, the surety of the grace of final perseverance, to me is so profoundly beautiful.

The Lord is the Good Shepherd. We just heard these readings in this time of the Church calendar. He goes out and seeks the lost sheep, leaving the ninety-nine, because He does not want to lose anyone. And He says, I did not lose any of my sheep.

So we have this beautiful promise of the Lord, that if we engage with this devotion honestly, there is a very concrete promise that He will be faithful to us.

And we are so faithful in such small things, to look upon His Holy Face every day, to tell Him that we love Him, to try and conform our lives more to His own. It is such a small thing for us, but the promises are so astoundingly beautiful, and we have to believe that they are real.

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, 79–80.
4. Scallan, The Golden Arrow, 80.
5. Scallan, The Golden Arrow, 81.
6. Scallan, The Golden Arrow, 233.