Votive Feast of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ Deformed in the Passion

Today is the final day before the great and holy fast of Lent. Today, known as Marti Gras or Fat Tuesday, is a day that has transformed from one final day of fun and merriment and meat eating to a day of public scandal and sin for many. Unfortunately, with so few actually keeping the forty day fast, it is a mockery that anyone would celebrate Fat Tuesday who does not commit to an authentically austere Lent.

I have written before on the importance of reparation to the Holy Face for Fat Tuesday. In fact, as I mentioned in that prior post, our Lord appeared to Mother Pierina in 1938 and requested a day of reparation today with these words:

“See how I suffer. Nevertheless, I am understood by so few. What gratitude on the part of those who say they love me. I have given My Heart as a sensible object of My great love for man and I give My Face as a sensible object of My Sorrow for the sins of man. I desire that it be honoured by a special feast on Tuesday in Quinquagesima (Shrove Tuesday – the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday). The feast will be preceded by novena in which the faithful make reparation with Me uniting themselves with my sorrow.”

The Facebook Page "Restore the '54" shares the following on the Votive Feast of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ Deformed in the Passion:

This Feast is not found in the Missae pro Aliquibus Locis of most editions of the Roman Missal. The Devotion to the Holy Face has its origins in the 12th century, with the relic of the Veil of Veronica kept at St. Peter's Basilica. The different Masses of the Holy Face used today and throughout history honor this relic which is guarded in the Vatican Basilica. 

The Mass for this Feast appears in a Missal from St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, dating from the 1500's. There is also a Votive Mass of the Holy Face in the Holy Land, which formed the 6th Mass of the "Via Crucis." 

In 1889 Leo XIII approved the Confraternity of the Holy Face. Then, in 1910 St. Pius X through an S.R.C. decree approved a Mass for the Holy Face using the Mass "Humiliavit" (used as the Votive Mass of the Passion for Fridays and Tuesday within Sexagesima) along with three specially composed prayers for the Collect, Secret, and Postcommunion. 

As Fr. Stefano Pedica, O.S.B. writes, "The Mass of the Holy Face of Jesus was permitted by the Holy Pope Pius X, who desired that it might be the same Mass of the Passion, namely the "Missa Humiliavit" with three "appropriate prayers" shedding light upon and determining the liturgical and theological sense of what is proper and due to the Most Sacred Face of the Redeemer...There appears clearly in the prayers the meaning the Holy See desires, about the devotion to the Holy Face. Veronica is not mentioned in them, as in the ancient prayers, nor is there mention of anything which could in the slightest way give cause to critics to oppose that which Holy Mother Church proposes to the faithful, in "lex orandi" and "lex credendi." The wording taken from the Old and New Testaments, confers a dogmatic rather than historic value to the cult of the Holy Face. The Votive Mass of the Most Holy Face of Jesus has been requested by very many Religious Communities (particularly the Benedictine-Silvestrines) and in various Dioceses throughout the world; showing that the devotion to the Holy Face is always growing and more deeply felt in the souls of the faithful." 

This feast, being one of reparation, also pairs well with the age old custom of having the Forty Hours Devotion in reparation for Carnival, which ends on this day. 

The Mass “Propter te sustínui," which is older than the 1910 prescription for the Missa "Humiliavit," belongs to the Missals of the dioceses of Fréjus and Marseille (France), and is one of the two Masses used today for the Feast of the Holy Face. Although, with the 1910 decree from the S.R.C., it would be prudent to use the Missa "Humiliavit" with the three proper prayers.

 Collect:

Omnipotent and merciful God, deign, we beseech you, grant to all those who honor with us the face of your Christ, disfigured by His Passion for our sins, the grace to see Him for eternity in all the splendor of celestial glory. Through the same Jesus Christ…