By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
This Shrove Tuesday on the threshold of Lent we celebrated also the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus Christ as promulgated by Pius XII in 1953. This image is inspired principally from the veil of Veronica and the Shroud. Some may also be familiar with the Holy Face of Manoppello.
Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, proclaimed during Quinquagesima, sets the stage for this devotion. Paul writes, “Now we see as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face.” After our journey of faith through life our hope will be fulfilled the moment we behold the Holy Face of Jesus Christ after our eyes close on this world for the last time.
The visage of “Ecce Homo,” the Christ of the Passion, prepares the way for these forty days of Lent in which we accompany Him through desert of penance and prayer to His final suffering at Mount Calvary. Let us learn that love alone will last, as Paul teaches, but eternity begins here with faith and hope.
This teaching proved seemingly impotent against the forces of a cultural Charybdis in the 1960s with the enticing mantra: “If it feels good, do it.” The promise of desires fulfilled without consequences was a siren song that deceived many. They were left unfortified by the simultaneous collapse of catechesis which befell the Church during the so-called Age of Aquarius.
The contraceptive pill served as a sort of symbolic nexus for this deceiving delirium inspired by the Evil One. Talk about bad timing: The confusion following Vatican II which seemed like a complete departure from the past coincided with a cultural sexual and moral upheaval.
The illusion of a completely new way of living seeming to promise freedom from moral restraint ensnared and deceived so many, destroying faith and life for many. This put us at enmity with God’s love Incarnate in the suffering Christ.
On the cross the Lord transforms through divine Love the greatest evil the world has ever seen into the greatest gift to man: infinite Mercy. For God Himself now in Christ the cross is the fullest manifestation of Love.
So not even for God did love always feel good: The faith which enables us to love Him likewise doesn’t always feel good. When we struggle to embrace the truth about love we must repeat that love is a matter of the will.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., tells us we are preaching the Gospel in a therapeutic culture. Addiction to feeling good can shut us out of love and divorce us from God. For many, it feels good to “control” my time and to schedule out anything that does not advance a materialistic agenda.
That’s why the welfare culture has become so overwhelming, drawing so many addicts into its delusions.
I recently received a phone call from a young man who described himself as a parishioner and who had been asked by his brother to be a Baptism sponsor for his nephew. He requested a letter of good standing. I asked him where he’s going to Mass because I have seen him only a few times over a nearly seven-year period, perhaps at Christmas and Easter. He explained that he isn’t doing so.
I said that the letter he is requesting I sign would verify that he is going to Mass. He thought he qualified as being “in good standing” while objectively in a state of mortal sin. Now it is common to define down the meaning of “in good standing,” as he called it, assuming he was perfectly entitled to the letter. He had no regard for how it would require that I perjure myself.
Benedict XVI once said that Christianity has become a pagan culture. For so many now the sacraments are meaningless beyond an excuse for a family party. They even think that you jump through about twelve years of hoops to “graduate” from the practice of the Catholic faith with Confirmation.
The parents can be the source of the problem, as when a mother responds with irate perturbation, “Why? She’s already been confirmed!” when the priest invites her daughter to join the parish teen group.
Sacraments for many are now evacuated of meaning, the Eucharist emptied of God in their minds. For these souls there are now some things which for God are not possible. How can we be saved by a God who can say He is truly present in the Holy Eucharist and not mean it or not have the power to do it? How can we believe in a Church that teaches these things?
We must continue to return to the faith of our fathers. We do this in part by dedicating ourselves to Scripture as to all gifts which come to us through Holy Church. The hymn to love in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians provides a beautiful reflection for Lent.
“Brethren: If I should speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have charity, I have become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, yet do not have charity, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, yet do not have charity, it profits me nothing.
“Charity is patient, is kind; charity does not envy, is not pretentious, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, is not self-seeking, is not provoked; thinks no evil, does not rejoice over wickedness, but rejoices with the truth; bears with all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Charity never fails” (1 Cor. 13:1-13).
Return again and again to these Scriptures throughout Lent as an aid for remaining focused on the purpose of the season: to love God who has loved us first on His cross. And then there is the consequence of this love of God:
“We see now through a mirror in an obscure manner, but then face to face.”
Behold the reality of this Love Incarnate in the Holy Face of the suffering Christ. As we compassionate Him in our fasting, almsgiving, and prayer of these forty days of Lent, let us find in it a spiritual desert that teaches us to receive and live by the saving love of God.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCITLFrAphorism
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