During Our Lord’s Passion, His Face was ravaged by the blows and spit of the guards, soldiers, and crowds. Every blasphemy is a spiritual injury to His Holy Face.

In the mid-19th century, Our Lord appeared to Sister Mary of St. Peter, a Carmelite nun and spoke to her of the sins —of blasphemy, atheism, communism, and profanation of Sundays— which continually wound Him.

He requested that devotion to His Holy Face be promulgated. The devotion is accompanied by the prayer known as “the Golden Arrow,” and would strike Our Lord’s Heart with welcome veneration and reparation. Those devoted to the Holy Face would console Our Lord and repair the injuries done to His Face.

Frenchman: M. Leo Dupont. Promoted this devotion. He kept an image of the Holy Face in his house, and hundreds of miracles were wrought there through this devotion. Pope Leo XIII established the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face, as Our Lord had requested, in 1885.

The feast of the Holy Face was set on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. We need the devotion of the Holy Face to repair the daily, habitual, incessant offenses dealt to Our Lord by our society.

This devotion ties back to the dawn of the Church, and how Our Lord longs to be consoled by the contemplation of His Face.