I. Object of the worship.

The Archconfraternity of the Holy Face professes specially to worship the Holy Face of our Lord, outraged and disfigured in his Passion. Religion has no object more touching and more worthy of our homage.

In the Old Testament mention is often made of the Face of God. In heaven, angels and cherubin adore it; upon earth, under whatever visible form it may appear, patriarchs, prophets and the just of all ages contemplate it with profound veneration and religious awe. But when the Son of God is incarnated, when the Word assumes the figure and the resemblance of man, the divine Face, in the person of Jesus, becomes an object of admiration, of respect and of love; first to Mary and Joseph, then to the disciples and to all who behold it and who appreciate its ravishing features and its ineffable beauty. At Bethlehem, at Nazareth, on Tabor, in the different slates through which it passed, this august Face, the mirror of the holiest of souls and of the most tender of hearts, merits to be contemplated and adored.

It above all deserves to be so in the humiliating and sorrowful state to which it was subjected during the Passion. Our Lord, in no other portion of his holy humanity, suffered so much as he did in his amiable Face. From the garden of Olives, where the adorable Face was covered with a sweat of blood and defiled by the traitorous kiss of Judas, to the last sigh which it exhaled at the moment of death, when it was bowed down upon the Cross, there was no species of abasement, ignominy and suffering to which Jesus did not voluntarily submit it. His head and his forehead were crowned with thorns, his eyes bathed with bitter tears, his lips steeped in gall and vinegar; blows, spittle, the most savage outrages were inflicted upon him. «We have seen him,” says the prophet, “and there was no beauty in him that we should desire him, he was despised and rejected of men.” The evangelists expressly say that the Jews spit in his Face and buffeted him and others struck his face with the palms of their hands, saying: “Prophesy unto us, o Christ, who is he that struck thee?” and, again spitting upon him, they took the reed and struck his head. These minute details, at once so expressive and affecting, were not written, and consigned to the holy Scriptures without a particular design of God. They eloquently exhort us to give, whilst meditating on the different mysteries of the Passion of the Savior, a special attention to the aspect and the worship of his sorrowful Face.

II. Practical object.

The homage which we render to the suffering Face of the Redeemer has an eminently practical object and a very real one. It is that of offering to the Divine Majesty, which has been offended, a just reparation for the inexpressible outrages which the impiety of the present times is not afraid, whether in secret or in public, of inflicting upon the sovereignty of God, on the divinity of Jesus Christ, on all that is religious and sacred. Amongst the special crimes belonging to the time in which we live, we must include blasphemy and the profanation of Sunday.

In our days blasphemy is committed with unheard of audacity. Not content with outraging the most adorable and thrice holy Name of God, the modern blasphemer attacks God personally; he combats Christ in the truth of his doctrine, in the morals of his Gospel, in the practice of his Sacraments, in the rights and even in the very existence of his Church. Not to speak of gross blasphemy, properly so called, which we so often hear resounding in our ears and which seems to be vomited from out the mouth of hell, but blasphemy which assumes to be doctrinal and scientific, is uttered privately in the secret societies or pompously in public discourses; it is printed and displays itself in the light of day, in newspapers, pamphlets and books; it poisons and perverts all conditions and all ages.

The violation of Sunday does not show a less undisguised contempt for the law of God and his sovereign authority. The sanctification and repose of the seventh day are no longer observed except by a small number of Christians worthy of the name. Holy days are profaned with a kind of indifference, deliberately and without remorse, in the workshop of the artisan and the counting house of the merchant, in the interior of families and in public places, in populous cities and in the smallest hamlets.

The infraction of these divine commandments has risen to a state of social crime.

It took place formerly, it is true; but never was it committed in so general a manner as at the present day. Evidently, such a state of things, so contrary to the fundamental economy of religion, overthrows at once the moral order of society, ruins the family to its foundations, and provokes the vengeance of Heaven. Such crimes cannot remain unpunished here below; they must be expiated, either by the scourge of divine justice or by voluntary reparation.

This reparation is an absolute and urgent necessity. At the present moment, there is not a single Catholic who does not loudly proclaim it to be so. The prosperity and peace of nations are obtainable only at this price.

What then must we do? The example given us by our enemies may serve as a lesson to us. We see them taking counsel with each other and concerting together; in free-masonry and the secret societies, men, blaspheming and profaning all that is most sacred, give each other the pass word, and link themselves together by an infernal compact; they have already reached the point of no longer dissimulating their projects; they form in the face of day frightful plots against the Lord and his Christ. Is not this then the moment for the children of God, for whoever has at heart the salvation of his brethren and the regeneration of society, to unite in the Name, and under the auspices of the august Face, so shamefully outraged, in order to erect a rampart against the torrents of divine anger which ceaselessly accumulate against us and threaten to overwhelm us? Was ever a society of reparation more necessary? Could Providence offer us a more opportune aid, and one in closer connection with our pressing needs?

III.  — The means of reparation.

The means of making effectual reparation for the crimes of which we have just spoken is to be found in a manner equally touching and admirable in the worship of the Holy Face, as understood and practiced in our Archconfraternity.

At all times there have been in the Church chosen souls, like Saint Augustine and Saint Gertrude, who have been animated by a special veneration for the divine Face of the Redeemer. There have even existed, at certain epochs, Confraternities having for their object its glorification and the rendering of public homage to it. But to attach to so consoling a devotion an idea of reparation, of establishing a direct relation between the species of crime which most outrages the sovereign Majesty of God and the kind of insult which has the most ignominiously disfigured the Face of Jesus Christ, is a conception which belongs to our own times and which characterizes our new Archconfraternity! It was necessary that blasphemy and the profanation of holy things should rise to a degree of scandal and of perversity unknown until now in order to enable Christian piety to look at the Face of Jesus under a fresh aspect, and thereby to open up a new means of reparation. Hitherto the salutary means contained in the devotion to the Holy Face had not been observed and turned to account. Perhaps it would not have been remarked, even now, had it not been for a special illumination communicated to a fervent Religious of the Carmel at Tours, Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre, and without the zeal of a great servant of God and St. Martin, Mr. Dupont, who, during twenty five years of his life, practiced acts of reparation before the Face of Jesus Christ. It was given to these two holy souls, vividly to see and feel all the power and reality existing in this means of reparation; they practiced it themselves and transmitted it to others.

It was felt that fresh needs require new remedies. Therefore, the devotion to the Holy Face enters naturally, as it were, into the souls of men and is everywhere received with eagerness and confidence. Accepting its reparatory character, the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face presents to the heavenly Father the adorable Face of our Lord, such as it was in the days of its Passion, wounded, spit upon, covered with sweat and with blood. “O Father, it exclaims, look on the Face of thy only and well beloved Son; of Him who is the «image of thy greatness», and the splendor of thy glory. Ho has suffered for us, he has expiated our ingratitude and our crimes, look on him and forgive us. Respice in Faciem Christi tui. And thou, merciful Face of Jesus, show us what thou art, and we shall be saved. Ostende Faciem tuam, et salvi erimus.”

These beautiful invocations which the Church utters so often in her Psalms, have become the watchword and the motto of our Archconfraternity. They express alt that this means of reparation, placed at our disposition, contains of consolation and of hope. The scars imprinted on the disfigured Face of the Redeemer, the tears, the sweat and the blood which flow from his loving and compassionate Face, offer to the associates a rich treasure, an inexhaustible mine of merits and of satisfactions, wherewith to pay their debts to divine justice. Let us then approach it with confidence, let us render it our homage; let us make use of this powerful advocate in order to plead our cause; the Father will “look on the Face of his Christ, and we shall be saved”.

IV. Models of reparation.

Our Lord has himself willed to point out to us, what is, in regard to him, the best means of reparation, first by raising up upon the road to Calvary a pious woman who offered him the solace of which he stood in need. Veronica perceives him  laden with his Cross, climbing the mountain of his sacrifice; his Face soiled, wounded, bleeding. Listening only to her compassion and her piety, the courageous Israelite braves the raillery of her fellow citizens, and the brutality of the executioners, and, making her way through the crowd, draws nigh to him; she detaches the veil of fine Egyptian linen which covers her head, spreads it over the wounded Face of the Savior, gently wipes with it his adorable Face, solacing, comforting and reanimating it. This was the first homage of reparation offered to our well beloved Redeemer on the path of sorrows; he showed his gratitude for it, and as a recompense he left on the veil of his compassionate benefactress the impression of his Holy Face in the stale to which it had been reduced.

Tradition has transmitted to us this memorable fact; it is, in the exercises of the way of the Cross, the subject of the sixth station, and the precious veil, with the miraculous image imprinted upon it, is kept, at the present day, in the Church of St. Peter at Rome, where, from time immemorial, it has been an object of supreme honor. Veronica herself, according to the communications made to Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre, is given us by our Lord as the model of the reparatory souls of which our epoch stands in need upon that other Calvary which the Church is climbing in the 19^th century; and her example should encourage Christians who feel themselves to be inspired with the desire to compensate the Saviour for the outrages committed against his majesty. The recompense bestowed upon her is the exterior symbol of the spiritual graces which we are sure to obtain by devoting ourselves to the work of reparation.

Another model is given us in the person of the good thief, who, from the cross as from a pulpit, spoke in defence of the cause of Christ, and confessed his divinity at the very moment when it was blasphemed by the other thief and by the multitude of the Jews. Turning a reverential and a suppliant countenance towards the sorrowful and wounded Face of Jesus: “Lord, he said, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom.” His prayer is granted at that very moment. The face of the Lord inclines itself towards him and his lips utter those ineffable words which ensure to this model of reparatory souls, as a supreme recompense, the immediate vision of his glorious Face: “Amen I say to thee, this day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

The fathers of the Church are inexhaustible in their praise of the good thief. Saint John Chrysostom, when meditating upon his faith, raises it above that of Abraham, of Moses and of Isaiah. “They, he says, saw Christ upon the throne and in the bosom of his glory and they believed; he sees him in the midst of torments, and he adores him as though he were in glory; he sees him on his cross, and he prays to him as though he were seated in the highest heavens; he sees a criminal, and he invokes a king…” According to the same father, the good thief became at once an “evangelist” and a “prophet”; he preaches the Divine Crucified, he announces his eternal kingdom.

Tradition knows him under the name of Dismas. The Roman martyrology inscribes him amongst the Saints of the 25^th of March, and the Breviary, in the “Proper particular to some places”, assigns him an office and indicates his feast as that of a double of the 24^th of April. This prayer contains a significant expression; the Church asks: “God, who justifies sinners, to provoke us to repentance by means of the compassionate aspect of His only Son which attracted the blessed thief, and to grant us the same eternal glory.” It would be impossible to offer to the Catholics of our days, to the zelators and apostles of the Reparation, a more worthy and better authorized model.

V. Picture adopted by the Archconfraternity.

The picture adopted as a type by the Archconfraternity is the representation of the august Face of the Savior, as it was visibly impressed upon the veil of Saint Veronica. This picture is venerated at Rome, in equal degree with the wood of the true Cross and the iron of the holy spear; it ranks amongst the great relics which are exhibited on certain days with great solemnity in the Vatican basilica. The copies which are painted on linen, or silk, if they are furnished with a seal of authentication, enjoy the same privileges as the miraculous picture itself, and, according to the rules of the liturgy, ought to be equally honored; therefore it is not proper to expose them to public veneration unless a lamp or a taper be kept constantly burning before them.

Since the exile of Pius IX at Gaeta, in 1848, in consequence of circumstances connected with the misfortunes of those days, these venerable copies of the Vatican picture have been diffused in great numbers amongst the faithful and above all in France (1).

One of the first sent from Rome providentially fell into the hands of Mr. Dupont in the year 1851. That great servant of God and fervent apostle of the reparation placed it in a position where it could be plainly seen in his drawing room; then he lighted a lamp before it, which he kept burning day and night, and during twenty five years he never ceased to honour it and obtain by its means graces and favours of all kinds.

Christian art, it is well known, takes pleasure in representing the divine Face of the Savior under several different aspects; sometimes it is the face of the Ecce Homo, otherwise called the “Christ of the Reed”, wearing on his brow the crown of thorns, and sometimes the veil with which the soldiers blindfolded him; sometimes it is the face of the Orante, or the Savior in the attitude of prayer, as it is seen in the catacombs; at other times, it is the head of Christ on the Cross, or, yet again, the Face of the Man God radiant with glory and majesty as on Tabor, or lastly the face of the Infant Jesus in his cradle, or in the arms of his mother. Expressive and touching as are these different representations, the Archconfraternity, in view of the object which it proposes to itself, prefers to them the fac-simile of the veil of Veronica (2).

If, in fact, we look at this holy picture with the eyes of faith, we shall recognize, even from the point of view of art and without speaking of its antiquity and its miraculous origin, that it is very touching in its aspect, and well calculated to induce souls to perform acts of reparation; it is impossible to consider, without a profound feeling of compunction, the bleeding forehead of the Savior, the swollen and half closed eyes, the livid and darkened countenance. On the right cheek, in addition to the wounds, may be clearly distinguished the impress of the gauntlet of iron worn on the hand which struck him so cruelly in the house of Annas, and on the other cheek traces of spittle. The nose is wounded and bleeding, the mouth open and filled with blood; the teeth are broken, the head and the hair torn out in different places. Thus changed and disfigured, the most Holy Face of Jesus does not the less present to us, in its whole aspect, an ineffable mixture of greatness, of compassion, of love and of sorrow, which touches the hearts of all who look upon it. Beneath those bleeding wounds and that ignoble spittle, the Christian soul recognizes the majesty of its God, and, touched with repentance at the sight of so striking an expiation of its ingratitude, it abandons itself, without reserve, to a sweet confidence and an ardent love for its Redeemer (3).

VI. Cross of the Archconfraternity.

The Archconfraternity, having its center in the archiepiscopal city of Tours where it had its origin, adopts as a principal sign of decoration for its members a cross with two arms arranged in the manner shown in the engraving given above; on the center of one of its sides is inscribed the monogram of Christ surrounded with the words: Pius IX. 1847, and upon the arms of the cross: Sit nomen Domini benedictum; on the obverse is seen engraved, on the center, the Holy Face, above which is the inscription of the Cross: INRI, and beneath: Vade retro, Satana. The associates are advised habitually to wear this cross as a safeguard; during pilgrimages and at public ceremonies, it is well to have it placed where it can be seen on the breast. The Archconfraternity is an army; the cross, such as it has been described, is its standard; let us wear it with confidence; it will help us to conquer our enemies and to repair our losses. But it is not absolutely necessary that the cross should be worn; according to the rule, it may be replaced by a medal or a scapular of the Holy Face.

VII. Advantages of the Archconfraternity.

To honor the august Face of the Redeemer by performing at the present day the same office in regard to it which the pious Veronica fulfilled on Calvary, to render ourselves useful to the Church, to society and to souls, by endeavoring to repair the crimes which do the greatest amount of evil to our contemporaries; these two acts, so noble and meritorious in themselves, become a source of graces and benedictions for fervent souls who devote themselves to the work. To these advantages may be added the numerous indulgences whether partial or plenary which the Church grants to the associates; and the participation in the ineffable promises made by our Lord to all those who honor his most Holy Face.

(1) See, on this subject, the Life of Mr. Dupont.

(2) It has been asked why the veil of Veronica does not wear the crown of thorns. We can give no other explanation than the following: the veil of Veronica only bore the impress of that portion of the divine Face upon which it had been spread and which was below the crown. In representing this portion of the Face of our Lord, it was necessary, in order not to leave it incomplete, to add the upper part of the forehead, but without the crown, and this is one of the characteristics which distinguish the veil of Veronica from the Ecce Homo.

(3) See The Devotion to the Holy Face, etc., p. 53.