The "Golden Arrow": May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be for ever praised, blessed, loved, adored, and glorified in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.
A traditional prayer to the Holy Face: O Jesus, who in Thy bitter Passion didst become "the reproach of men and the Man of Sorrows," I venerate Thy Holy Face, whereon once shone the beauty and gentleness of the Godhead. In its disfigured features I recognize Thine infinite love, and I long to love Thee and to make Thee loved. Imprint, O Lord, Thy divine likeness upon my soul, that I may never be parted from Thy love, and grant that one day I may contemplate Thy glorious Face in heaven. Amen.
Devotion to the Holy Face honors the face of Our Lord as it appeared in His Passion — bruised, spat upon, and disfigured for love of us. It rests on the prophecy of Isaiah: "there is no beauty in him, nor comeliness… despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows" (Isaiah 53:2–3). The Church has always treasured the memory of that face: in the veil of Veronica, who wiped it on the road to Calvary, and in the image many venerate on the Shroud of Turin.
In its modern form the devotion was revived at Tours, in France, through a humble Carmelite, Sister Marie of St. Peter (1816–1848). Between 1843 and 1847 she recorded that Our Lord asked for reparation for two great sins of the age — blasphemy and the profanation of Sunday — and gave her a short prayer of praise to be launched like a "Golden Arrow" to wound His Heart with love and console Him for the outrages of men. Her cause was taken up by Venerable Leo Dupont, the "Holy Man of Tours," who kept a lamp burning day and night before an image of the Holy Face and saw many healings; through him the devotion spread across the world.
The Holy Face became especially dear to the Carmelites: St. Thérèse of Lisieux took as her full religious name "Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face," finding in the hidden, suffering face of Jesus the pattern of her own little way of love. Pope Leo XIII approved the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face in 1885, and Pope Pius XII established the Feast of the Holy Face on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, in 1958 — setting the disfigured face of the Redeemer at the very threshold of Lent.
The "Golden Arrow":
May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be for ever praised, blessed, loved, adored, and glorified in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.
A traditional prayer to the Holy Face:
O Jesus, who in Thy bitter Passion didst become "the reproach of men and the Man of Sorrows," I venerate Thy Holy Face, whereon once shone the beauty and gentleness of the Godhead. In its disfigured features I recognize Thine infinite love, and I long to love Thee and to make Thee loved. Imprint, O Lord, Thy divine likeness upon my soul, that I may never be parted from Thy love, and grant that one day I may contemplate Thy glorious Face in heaven. Amen.
The "Golden Arrow":
May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God be for ever praised, blessed, loved, adored, and glorified in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.
A traditional prayer to the Holy Face:
O Jesus, who in Thy bitter Passion didst become "the reproach of men and the Man of Sorrows," I venerate Thy Holy Face, whereon once shone the beauty and gentleness of the Godhead. In its disfigured features I recognize Thine infinite love, and I long to love Thee and to make Thee loved. Imprint, O Lord, Thy divine likeness upon my soul, that I may never be parted from Thy love, and grant that one day I may contemplate Thy glorious Face in heaven. Amen.