The new Archconfraternity of the Holy Face requires a new Manual. We, therefore, present to our associates one which is furnished with the characteristic features that appear to be most suitable to it.

We have preserved the excellent reflections, the beautiful forms of prayer and the pious practises extracted from the writings of Mr. Dupont and of Sister Saint-Pierre, constituting the basis of the former Manual which was drawn up solely for the use of a simple con­fraternity. We have however been obliged, in order to bring it into con­formity with its present title, to subject it to important modifications required by the laws of our new rule; by the special object we desire to attain and by the new favours granted by the Sovereign Pontiff. Moreover, whilst reforming it, we have also considerably augmented it; for instance, we have added to it a No­vena of Meditations which we have, for a long time past, been requested to give; a prayer entitled: “An honourable amends to the Holy Face,” intended to be used at the monthly meetings, acts of consecration and of reparation, and various other prayers on the same subject. Lastly, all the pious practices con­cerning the worship of the Holy Face, the leaflets of which are printed and distributed in a separate form, are united together in this Manual and placed before the reader, each in the place most suitable for it. Hence, we here possess a real “Manual of the Holy Face” in a complete form and adapted to the needs of all the associates. We also purpose to detach from the body of the work, under the title of The little Manual everything that is essential under the various heads, and out of them to form a small book, costing very little, in order to be within the reach and to suit the convenience of all. In this way it will likewise be possible to procure in a separate form the Little Office of the Holy Name of God, which is so highly appreciated by many fervent Christians.

At the head of the present Manual, are a series of documents which may be termed official, and of which we have had it at heart to give the text in all its integrity. These documents consist of the three most precious Briefs of the Holy Father, the Ordinance of the venerable Metropolitan of Tours, the petition addressed to Leo XIII, and several other documents connected with the origin and the very basis of the Archconfraternity. Our associates will be glad to have them at their disposition and before their eyes; they will see therein an authorisation which will increase their respect and confidence; moreover, in time of need, our zelators and our friends will discover in them a mine fertile in instructions and in information with regard to our institution.

The erection of an Archconfraternity of the Holy Face by the Sovereign Pontiff has been, in the times in which we live, a providential event of which time alone can reveal all the consequences. Let us recapitulate the manner in which this important matter has been conducted; it is well that our associates should not be ignorant of it and that they should never forget it.

According to the customs of the Roman Court, the favour which we solicited could not be granted, excepting successively and by degrees; that is to say the power of aggregation would have been conceded to us, at first for our own diocese only, then later on for France, and some of the neighbouring countries, and finally, at the close of a certain lapse of time, for the rest of the world. It would have been a prolonged period of waiting during four or five years that we should have had to submit to, and it was believed at Rome that no other course was possible. Now, on the 15th of last September 1885, the cardinal prefect of the sacred Congregation of Rites was present at an audience given by the Holy Father. His Eminence, who was kindly disposed towards us, thought that he was bestowing upon us a great favour by making it the subject of his first request, that the title of Archconfraternity should be granted to the whole of France: Pro Gallia. The Holy Father listened and reflected. What was it which at that moment passed through the mind and the heart of the Vicar of Jesus Christ? Had he an intuition of the good which the worship of the Holy Face was destined to produce? Did the holy man of Tours, whose cause has been begun, exercise over him an invisible and secret influence? Did the name of Tours, the remembrance of saint Martin, our thaumaturgus, inspire Leo XIII with an especial and favourable interest in us?

Therein lies the secret of God. What is certain is that the Sovereign Pontiff did not delay his decision; it was precise, absolute and plainly formulated: Tam pro Gallia quam ubique, “for the whole world as well as for France.” These great words were uttered on the 15^th of September, the Octave of the Nativity of the blessed Virgin. The Brief was signed on the 1^st of October, and arrived at Tours on Rosary Sunday. The promptitude with which we obtained everything at once, thanks to the unexpected benevolence of Leo XIII, was looked upon at Rome as a real miracle.

It is easy to perceive some of the dogmatic and moral consequences resulting from so striking a fact.

I

Firstly, in virtue of the new title of Archconfraternity attached to our Oratory, the city of Saint Martin receives by means of a species of canonical investiture, the priviledged place appertaining to it in the order of works of reparation, belonging to our times; it enters into full and legitimate possession of a sacred inheritance which it derives from the “holy man of Tours” and from the celebrated Carmelite, Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre. This family inheritance can never be taken away from it, it is a domain which henceforth is assured to it; it is guaranteed for ever by this sole fact that it has become the seat and the centre of the Archconfraternity “of the Holy Face», so called.

An archconfraternity, according to the organisation of the Church, is possessed of great importance. Archconfraternities occupy the first rank, after the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the religious orders and the different institutions approved by the Holy See. They are sacred institutions, springing from the Holy See, endued with their own individual life, and having their own special legislation. If we glance over the Collection of Papal Bulls, we shall find in them a number of constitutions, of decrees and of pontifical ordinances relating to them, establishing or explaining their statutes, or defending and maintaining their privileges and their rites. Such is our beautiful Archconfraternity of the Holy Face; it is erected in perpetuity, in modum perpetuum; it participates in the duration, in the immutability of the Church herself; it is derived in a direct manner from the apostolic See.

It has, moreover, a characteristic which other archconfraternities do not possess, namely, a right of affiliation devoid of any restriction attached to it; its power of aggregating to itself similar confraternities embraces all the dioceses of all cities, all the different parts of the world: ubique terrarum. — Let then the town of Tours, amongst all the glories which decorate and enrich it, congratulate itself and let it deem itself happy to have obtained still another through the Holy Face. Let it not forget that it is indebted for it to Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre and to Mr. Dupont!

II

In the second place, the Pontifical Brief of the Archconfraternity casts a vivid illumination upon the devotion itself, it shows it to us in its true light. — No longer can it be said of the devotion to the Holy Face,— as some have formerly rashly insinuated, — that it is a new devotion, that it is local and private, that it is not suited to any, except to devout persons and to Religious. For we now behold it blessed, encouraged, and solemnly recognised by the Head of the Church. Our Statutes, as submitted to Leo XIII, are not conceived in vague and incomplete terms; they clearly affirm “the special worship of adoration and love, which has for its object the most Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ”; they declare “the veneration of this adorable Face to be the great means of preventing and repairing the impious outrages committed against the Majesty of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the authority of the Church”: expressions which permit the crimes of free-masonry and of secret societies to be comprised amongst the objects of reparation; they adopt as their motto the invocation to which the Holy Father has attached sixty days of Indulgence: Lord, show us thy Face, and we shall be saved; lastly, they oblige the associates: 1^st to wear an effigy of the Holy Face; 2^ndly to propagate the devotion by all the means in their power.

Thus, by means of the special title which it bears, as well as by the essential particulars and the spirit of its rule, thanks to our Archconfraternity, we now possess what has never hitherto been seen elsewhere; that is to say, a pious Archconfraternity of the Holy Face, really and properly so called, which the Sovereign Pontiff has overwhelmed with signal favours, and has raised to the highest possible dignity.

Henceforth, each time that a public or a private act of devotion towards the Holy Face is made, we may be sure of performing an eminently Catholic act of worship. You may then, pious associates, in all security and confidence, prostrate yourselves before this august picture; you may place yourselves, as it were, face to face with it; you may look at the adorable Face, study it, and contemplate it; you may by its means become penetrated, little by little, with an intimate knowledge of the spirit of Jesus and of his divine heart, and you may descend into the depths of the different mysteries relative to his birth, his life, his death and his resurrection; in these exercises of faith and love, you will be guided, not only by a sentiment of personal piety, but by the will and, so to say, by the linger of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. Under such a master, what treasures of light and of grace may you not draw out of this heavenly mine? What fruits of benediction may you not receive as the recompense of your fervent contemplations!

III

In the third place, by virtue of the Apostolic Brief, the devotion to the Holy Face and the practise of Reparation are united in our Archconfraternity; they complete each other, and are, as it were, fused into one another. Henceforward, these two works no longer run the risk of being separated from one another in the mind of the faithful. The work of reparation, for instance, ceases to be isolated, and therefore, in a certain sense, defective, incomplete and subject to fall into disuse, as was the case formerly; it finds its life, its fecundity and its most certain success in the worship of the Holy Face, above all, in the sorrowful Face of the Redeemer, which, in accordance with the communication madeto Sister Saint-Pierre, ought to be at once the symbol and the means of reparation.

It is evident that, separated from the Holy Face, the reparations we offer to God for contemporary blasphemies and the profanation of Sunday, are in themselves imperfect and very insufficient. What human tears, in fact, even it they were to flow in torrents from the most penitent and the purest eyes, would suffice worthily to weep over the frightful crimes that are committed against the Sovereignty and the majesty of God? What humiliations and what voluntary sufferings on the part of the holiest souls would ever suffice to repair the sacrileges and other inexpressible outrages invented by free-masonry and modern impiety! But in our Archconfraternity, appropriating to ourselves, in the name and through the authority of the Church, the merits of the Holy Face, and invoking it directly, we present it to the heavenly Father, we say to Him: “Look, O God, our Protector, behold our tears and our expiations, listen to our prayers and our sighs. Protector noster, aspice, Deus. But this is not enough. Are we worthy of ourselves to appease Thine anger? Look at the same time on the Face of Thy Christ. Behold the tears which flow from his penitent eyes; the wounds which cover his sacred cheeks! Listen to the cry for pardon which he addresses to Thee on our behalf, and forgive us! Respice in Faciem Christi tui…” We can understand how marvellously suitable this offering and this spectacle are to disarm the Divine justice.— Such then is the power of the Reparation obtained through the Holy Face; such is the work which Leo XIII, in his profound wisdom, has approved and decorated with the title of an Archconfraternity.

IV

Lastly, the Holy Father, by establishing this Archconfraternity in our midst, gives thereby to our work the character of a great Catholic union; and he converts our humble Oratory into a centre of prayers and of reparatory adoration which extends its rays throughout the whole universe. This dear little sanctuary of the Holy Face! what a contrast with the modesty of its commencement and the simplicity of its original slate! Formerly, within its narrow limits, we remember how some few of the faithful used to come and timidly gather round a fervent servant of God in order to unite with him in prayer offered half aloud at an hour which had previously been agreed upon; those who could not be present at the meeting united themselves with it in spirit; whilst those who were prevented by distance from visiting the august picture desired to have a similar one in their homes. Prayers were offered for an infirm person, for some one who was sick or who asked to be cured, for a sinner who had been recommended to them. It was not a Confraternity; it was not even an association, but a simple union of secret and spontaneous prayers. And behold! at the present day, this same union of prayers and of homage to the Holy Face, the beginningof which was so little and so obscure, which commenced in an ordinary room, in the parlour of a man of the world, attracts the notice and the benevolence of the Sovereign Pontiff! Through his apostolical authority, he, in a manner, adopts it, blesses it, sanctions it, consecrates it, and elevates it to the dignity and the preeminence of an Archconfraternity; he makes it a durable and permanent association to which he assigns no other limits than those of the extremities of the world, and the end of time!

Associates of the Holy Face, it is for us to derive for our own benefit all the consequences which result from so memorable an event. Let us respond to the intentions entertained by the Head of the Church, let us put to profit the favour which he offers us; let us make it fructify by means of the zeal and fervour it requires from us. Oh! if we are only faithful, what hopes may we not conceive? Salvation is in question; yes, the salvation of society, the salvation of families, the salvation of souls! But the work of salvation is primarily a divine and holy work; it is associated both with the power of God and the cooperation of man. Remember, dear associates of the Archconfraternity, that in giving yourselves up to this work you have for cooperater the God-Man himself. You have in his Holy Face all that in him is most personal, most merciful, most amiable, most touching; you have the riches of graces and of merits acquired during his Passion by the grief and the ignominy of his adorable Face. Make the most of them in union with your brothers and sisters of the association who multiply and will continue to multiply in all the different portions of the globe. Take this manual, read it over again and again; be penetrated with the doctrine which it contains; appropriate to yourselves the sentiments and thoughts which it suggests; follow the beautiful counsels and the rules of conduct which it prescribes; let every one of us often repeat in the fervour of his soul: I have prayed to and entreated Thy Face, O Lord; have pity on me according to thy promise, save me in Thy mercy; no, I shall never be confounded, because I have called upon Thee.

Could the heart of the God-Man be insensible to such a concert of supplications, supported by so many acts of virtue? No doubtless! His merciful Face will be our powerful Advocate; he will send us that grace of salvation of which, at the present day, society has so great need, and which the sacred Scriptures promise us: O Lord, show us Thy Face, and we shall be saved.

1. Janvier.