(LifeSiteNews) — The first Marian apparition of modern times with a public message approved by the Church took place in La Salette, France, in 1846, and featured a stern warning from the Mother of God against two principal sins – blasphemy and the desecration of the Lord’s Day.
It is no coincidence that Our Lady’s tearful lament over the desecration of the Lord’s Day coincided with the growing acceptance of the “new geology” of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count de Buffon, in France, James Hutton in Scotland, and Charles Lyell in England, all of whom sought to explain the geology of the Earth in terms of slow and gradual processes and denied the Roman Catechism’s teaching on six-day creation and the global extent of Noah’s Flood.
From apostolic times, the faithful had celebrated the Lord’s Day not only as the commemoration of Our Lord’s glorious Resurrection but also as the commemoration of the first day of creation when God had created the heavens and the earth. Indeed, the Gospel of John calls Sunday “the first day of the week” for this very reason (John 20:19).
Writing in the second century, St. Justin Martyr described the Sunday observance of the early Church:
The day of the sun is the day on which we all gather in a common meeting, because it is the first day, the day on which God, changing darkness and matter, created the world; and it is the day on which Jesus Christ our savior rose from the dead. For he was crucified on the day before that of Kronos [Saturn]; and on the day after that of Kronos, which is the day of the Sun, He appeared to His Apostles and disciples, and taught them these things which we have also submitted to you for your consideration. [Emphasis added.]
According to St. Gregory the Theologian, fourth-century patriarch of Constantinople:
Just as the creation begins with Sunday (and this is evident from the fact that the seventh day after it is Saturday, because it is the day of repose from works) so also the second creation begins again with the same day [i.e., the day of the Resurrection, emphasis added].
The strong link between the original creation and the “new creation in Christ” also stands revealed in the ancient Liturgy of Antioch. According to the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC, 1167), the Syriac Office of Antioch includes the following prayer:
When we ponder, O Christ, the marvels accomplished on this day, the Sunday of your holy Resurrection, we say: ‘Blessed is Sunday, for on it began creation.’ [Emphasis added.] (Fanquith, The Syriac Office of Antioch, Vol. VI, first part of Summer, 193 B.)
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Thus, the ultimate authority for the primordial institution by God of the seven-day week is Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself who taught that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27) and that “the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28).
Throughout the history of the Church, the Magisterium has recalled the words of Scripture to the effect that the Ten Commandments were written by “the finger of God” (CCC, 2056). Thus, whereas Moses was inspired to write what God wanted Him to say, the words of the Ten Commandments were written by God Himself, without a human instrument. When Jesus affirmed His divine authority over evil spirits, He told the crowds: “But if I by the finger of God cast out devils; doubtless the kingdom of God is come upon you” (Luke 11:20). Thus, Jesus identified Himself as the same I AM who wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone and who had said:
Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it (Exodus 20:9-11).
The Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent explained the divine origin of the seven-day week and the holiness of the Sabbath with reference to Exodus 20 and the writing of the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone by the “finger of God.” God ordained a day of rest and divine worship for mankind at the foundation of the world, so that man would not only enjoy physical, mental, and spiritual rejuvenation, but also because the act of resting from manual labor would be a physical reminder that God had supernaturally created all of the different kinds of creatures for mankind in six days, finished the work with the creation of St. Adam and St. Eve on the sixth day, and rested in His perfectly beautiful, complete and harmonious creation on the seventh day of creation.
The war on Sunday and the Holy Name
It is no coincidence that the two principal political attacks on the Kingship of Christ in modern times – the French Revolution of the 18th century and the Bolshevik Revolution in the 20th century – both featured a concerted attempt by the governing powers to abolish the seven-day week and to obliterate Sunday observance. Nor is it a coincidence that the naturalistic worldview of the leaders of both of these revolutionary movements denied the perfect, finished work of creation in the beginning and insisted on an evolutionary progression in time towards a utopia in the future. Enlightenment thought has so penetrated the intellectual atmosphere of the modern world that even contemporary Catholics who strive to uphold the traditional faith and worship of the Church have largely forgotten the teaching of all of the Church Fathers and Doctors on what St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae calls “the first perfection of the universe.”
Summing up the teaching of all the Fathers, the Angelic Doctor defines this “first perfection” as “the completeness of the world at its first foundation,” by which he means that every kind of creature existed together, each one perfect according to its nature, with man and for man, in perfect harmony, from the beginning of creation.
What many conservative Catholic commentators have also failed to see is that the acceptance of Lyellian geology and the rejection of six-day creation by Catholic intellectuals not only led to a loss of reverence for the Lord’s Day but also to a kind of institutionalized blasphemy within Catholic universities and seminaries. As early as the 18th century, authors like Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count de Buffon, gained tremendous popularity with literate French-speaking Catholics, even as they denied the literal truth of the sacred history of Genesis in their writings about natural science.
Little by little these writings desensitized Catholic intellectuals to the blasphemy of attributing error to the Holy Scriptures, with the rationalization that “scientific advances” had made it possible for modern man to understand the history and constitution of the universe much better than their “primitive” forebears so that God had protected the scriptural authors from errors in matters of faith and morals but had allowed them to introduce errors about history, geography, and natural science into the sacred writings.
Many [opes condemned this blasphemy against the perfect veracity of our Heavenly Bridegroom, most notably Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus deus and Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis, but by the end of the 19th century a growing number of Catholic intellectuals had embraced the view that Holy Scripture was only free from error in matters of faith and morals. For them, the Heavenly Bridegroom was no longer the spotless Lamb whose every Word was true. Like Othello, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name, they believed Iago’s – i.e., secular academia’s – deceptive “proof” of the Eternal Word’s fallibility, fell into a kind of spiritual adultery, and shifted their allegiance from the Divine Word of their Heavenly Bridegroom to the consensus view in fallible human science, using the latter to blaspheme the former and to bring disgrace on His Holy Name.
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Reparation for blasphemy and the profanation of Sunday
In the 1840s, in Tours, France, Carmelite Sister Mary of St. Peter received a series of private revelations from Our Lord which contained a remedy for the principal evils of modern times. Our Lord told Sister Mary of St. Peter that, as His Holy Face represented the Godhead to mankind, the sins of mankind, past, present and future, found their most virulent expression in attacks on His Holy Face. According to Sister Mary of St. Peter, the work revealed to her to save society from the influence and control of “revolutionary men” had two objects:
The reparation of blasphemy and the reparation of the profanation of Sunday by servile works; consequently, it embraces the reparation of outrages against God, and against the sanctification of His Name. Should devotion to the Holy Face be united to this work? Yes, it is its most precious ornament, since Our Lord has made a present of His Holy Face to the work, that it may be the object of the devotion of the associates; they will become all-powerful with God by the offering which they will make Him of the august Face, Whose presence is so pleasing in His sight, that it infallibly appeases His anger and draws down upon poor sinners His infinite mercy. Yes, when the Eternal Father looks upon the Face of His Son, which was disfigured by blows and covered with ignominy, the sight thereof moves Him to mercy. Let us endeavor to profit by so precious a gift, and let us beg Our Divine Savior to hide in the secret of His Face during the evil days.
A French attorney and close friend of Sister Mary of St. Peter, Venerable Leo Dupont, emerged as one of the most zealous promoters of Devotion to the Holy Face. In the study of his home in Tours, Venerable Leo kept two oil lamps perpetually burning, one before St. Veronica’s image of the Holy Face of Jesus, the other before Leo’s copy of the Latin Vulgate Bible. As Fr. Lawrence Carney explains in his book The Secret of the Holy Face: The Devotion Destined to Save Society:
The Veil of Veronica is a veil upon which the adorable face was miraculously impressed without paint nor artificial colors, but by the power of the divine Son of God during His passion. After some two thousand years, it is quite darkened, so its features are difficult to make out. It is housed in the epistle side pillar of the papal altar along with the holy lance and wood of the true cross since 1606.
From tradition, we are informed that the holy woman known as Saint Veronica broke through the mob to console Jesus while He was carrying the cross, His holy altar of sacrifice, to console Him. “So full of deep sorrow into which He was then plunged by the weight of the sins of the world.” She took off her headdress of fine Egyptian linen and handed it to Jesus to wipe His face of sweat, mud, spittle, and blood. He gave it back to her with His august image impressed on it. His imprint detailed the marks of the fingers of the cruel men who gave the sacrilegious blows…
The remembrance of this has been attached to the sixth station of the cross since time immemorial… It is still preserved as one of the precious relics in memory of the great Redeemer. The Veil of Veronica represents the face of Jesus in His passion…
Jesus revealed to Sister Mary of St. Peter the commemoration of the wiping of the sacred face with the Veil of Veronica has such an effect: for those who apply themselves to the work of reparation would perform the same work as Veronica. When devotees of the Confraternities of the Holy Face make the prayers contained therein, it is as if they are each there breaking through the mob, consoling the face of Jesus.
Without any publicity or fanfare, Venerable Leo Dupont followed an inspiration and began to anoint visitors to his home with oil from the lamp that burned in front of the image, before inviting them to kneel down and pray with him for their intentions in front of the Holy Face. The Divine Physician responded by granting thousands of miraculous cures, both spiritual and physical, to those who prayed before the Holy Face and who were anointed with oil from the lamp that burned before the Image. According to Fr. Carney:
Monsignor Paul Guerin testified to having himself seen over 6,000 certificates of cures wrought by the virtue of the miraculous oil in [Mons. Dupont’s] oratory of the Holy Face; which [became] a resort of pilgrims from all parts of the universe.
Venerable Leo’s mountain-moving faith
Venerable Leo was able to obtain these spectacular miracles from God because he maintained a pure and unadulterated faith in his Heavenly Bridegroom and in His Sacred Word at the very time when so many of the most highly educated and gifted members of Catholic society in Europe and North America were being seduced into skepticism and spiritual infidelity. Venerable Leo’s childlike but manly faith shines forth in the following account of one of the thousands of miracles that took place in his home before the two lamps, one burning before the image of the Holy Face of Jesus, the other burning before the Latin Vulgate Bible.
Leo:
Young lady, are you ill?
Lady:
Yes, sir. I am very ill. I have been unable to go to work for two years. You see, Mr. Dupont, I have a terrible cancer with three frightful wounds!
Leo:
Come, we will pray. (They kneel down and pray before the Holy Face. Then Leo turns to his helper, Madame Viot.)
Madame Viot, will you take the sick person to the guest bedroom and anoint her with the oil from the lamp?
(Madame Viot escorts the young lady to the room. They return a minute later.)
Lady:
I am no better, Mons. Dupont.
Leo:
We must pray again.
(He prays again before the Holy Face.) Miss Viot, now take the sick lady to the room again and anoint her with the holy oil.
(Madame Viot escorts the young lady to the room. They return a minute later.)
Lady:
But I am not a bit better.
Leo:
We will pray again. (Venerable Leo prays again, this time explicitly invoking God as ‘Creator of the universe’ and then orders Mme. Viot to anoint her for a third time.)
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A priest by the name of Fr. Musy was an eyewitness to this extraordinary scene. And although Fr. Musy himself had been cured of a serious throat ailment through Leo’s prayers, after Leo had prayed a fourth and a fifth time with his visitor without any visible result, Fr. Musy began to wonder, in the words of one account, “if it were right for a human to carry a case to these extremes, but at the same time he felt it would be wrong for him to speak out against further prayers and anointings.” The priest then noticed that Madame Viot and the cancer-stricken lady came out of the room where she had been anointed for the seventh time, smiling, as the lady exclaimed, “O, thank God! One of the frightful wounds is healed!”
Leo ordered the lady to kneel down for an eighth time, and after the eighth anointing the second wound was healed. Then for the ninth time he led them in prayer before the Holy Face, and when Madame Viot had finally finished a ninth anointing, the third and last gaping wound was closed, and the young lady, seeing herself cured, ran out into the garden, overcome with joy. Leo approached Fr. Musy who had been left speechless in amazement, and said to him: “Father, with God nothing is impossible! What a contradiction it would be to think that God would create billions of human beings out of nothing and be unable to cure a little sore!”
In this incident we see displayed Venerable Leo’s unshakable faith in the perfect goodness of God, in His omnipotence as the Creator of the world in six days, and in the infallibility of His Sacred Word. “The Holy Scripture,” he would say, “is the Face of God; before that Face, as before the Divine Presence, fire should burn day and night … I see Jesus Christ entire in each word of Scripture. Jesus Christ cannot be divided.”
It was this threefold faith that enabled him to “ask and receive” stupendous miracles of physical and spiritual healing with perfect confidence. The Novena to the Holy Face of Jesus, which will begin on Sunday, February 23, offers every Catholic the opportunity to ask Our Lord for the same kind of childlike faith that animated Venerable Leo Dupont, so that each and every one of us can help to bring spiritual and physical healing to the suffering souls in our families and communities.
Towards the longed-for restoration
As we prepare for the Novena to the Holy Face, it is important to realize that, in our time, the satanic assault on the Lord’s Day has taken a more subtle form than it had assumed in Venerable Leo’s day. Little by little, a consumerist culture has spread through most of the world, relegating Sunday to an ordinary shopping day, a day for consumption and entertainment like any other. Even many Church leaders have accommodated to the spirit of the age by moving many liturgical feasts from their proper places on the calendar to the weekend for the sake of “convenience.”
This desacralization of time culminates a long effort by the enemies of God to deny the six days of fiat creation, the Sabbath rest of the Lord, and the Lord’s Day as the commemoration of the Lord’s Resurrection. Just as theistic evolution obliterates the distinction between God’s work of fiat creation and the natural order of providence, the desacralization of Sunday first blurs and eventually obliterates the distinction between the sacred and the profane, the order of grace and the order of nature. But that is not all. The reduction of all time to a continuous natural process leads easily to the conflation of secular and sacred behavior, including speech, music, dress, and ritual. This helps to explain why the speech, music, dress, and deportment of the faithful in ordinary parish liturgies grow more and more indistinguishable from the speech, music, dress and deportment of the secular (practically atheistic) world.
If the Sabbath was made for man, it can only have been made by God for man’s benefit. The wholesale neglect of the divinely-mandated memorial of a finished fiat creation and of Our Lord’s finished work of redemption has also led to the blurring of the distinction between work and leisure. Man’s need to participate in the work of God through six days of constructive work has been increasingly frustrated by the instant availability of all kinds of distractions, entertainments, and temptations through wireless communications and the internet. The psychological need to divide one’s life between periods of sustained work and periods of prayer and leisure has also been frustrated, leaving a multitude of souls, at one and the same time, agitated, discouraged, excited, and exhausted.
In this fallen world, the Lord’s Day combines into one holy day a memorial of the finished work of creation, the finished work of the Cross, the Lord’s glorious Resurrection, and the on-going work of sanctification initiated on Pentecost Sunday. It is the Lord’s perpetual reminder that God is our Creator and Redeemer, and that man can only be restored and transformed into the perfect image and likeness of Christ by sharing in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and by living one life with Him.
By praying the Novena to the Holy Face, as recommended by Fr. Lawrence Carney, the founder of the League of St. Martin, we can make reparation to Our Lord for all the sacrileges, indifference, and offenses that are being inflicted upon Him, especially by sins of blasphemy, and profanation of the Lord’s Day, but we can also obtain the graces that we need to do the perfect acts of love that He has prepared for us in each moment, so that we can live our consecration to Jesus through Mary and help to hasten the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the social reign of Christ Our King, and the Era of Peace promised by Our Lady of Fatima.
Hugh Owen, Director
Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation – www.kolbecenter.org
For information about the Novena to the Holy Face of Jesus and the League of St. Martin, please visit https://www.martinians.org/novena-to-the-holy-face