#stveronica

St Veronica, pray for us to Our Lord that His Holy Face May be imprinted on our hearts so that we may be always mindful of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Notre-Dame -de- lure / Our Lady of Lure, Avignon, France (1110) – 12 July:HERE:https://anastpaul.com/2021/07/12/notre-dame-de-lure-our-lady-of-lure-avignon-france-1110-and-memorials-of-the-saints-12-july/ St John Gualbert (c985-1073) Abbot, Founder of the Vallumbrosan Order and many Monasteries. “The Merciful…

St. Veronica and Shrine of the Holy Face.

Autor's interpretation of classical Italian painting.

Oil on canvas

80 x 55cm

2017

St. Veronica

Notre-Dame -de- lure / Our Lady of Lure, Avignon, France (1110) and Memorials of the Saints – 12 July

Notre-Dame -de- lure / Our Lady of Lure, Avignon, France (1110) – 12 July: At the beginning of the 6th century, a Priest from Orleans, France, named Saint Donat du Val, in search of solitude, made his way into the Alps. The mountain of Lure seemed to be the kind of place he was looking for and with the approval of the Bishop of Sisteron, he settled there.On the side of the mountain he built an…

The Holy Veronica of Binasco

Thought for the Day – 12 July – The Memorial of St Veronica

“Veronica?”

“Bernice Veronica” – both names referring to the Woman who wiped the Face of Jesus, commonly depicted in every Catholic church, at the Sixth Station of the Cross.

Did she exist?   And what does it mean to be “a Veronica?”

The Catholic Church tells us that a veil bearing a miraculous image of the Face of Jesus has existed since the earliest centuries, recorded in history and in art.   About the time this miraculous veil first appeared in Rome, in the Middle Ages, the name “Veronica” referred to the veil itself–“Veronica” meaning “vera” or true, and “icon” meaning image, or even more precisely, “to be present.”   Those who gazed upon the veil bearing the true Face of Jesus stood in God’s presence.   They were turned toward His Face. Legends sprang up sometime later about a woman named “Veronica,” who was sometimes associated with the woman “Berenice” or “Bernice,” the bleeding woman who touches the hem of Jesus’s garment in the Gospel. “These pious traditions cannot be documented but there is no reason why the belief that such an act of compassion did occur should not find expression in the veneration paid to one called Veronica.” —The Catholic Encyclopedia. St Pope John Paul II expressed the answer to the question of Veronica most beautifully in his poem,

“Name”

In the crowd walking towards the place

[of the Agony]–

did you open up a gap at some point or were you

[opening it] from the beginning?

And since when? You tell me, Veronica.

Your name was born in the very instant

in which your heart

became an effigy:  the effigy of truth.

Karol Wojtyla

When a soul performs an “act of compassion,” Jesus leaves His image on the “veil” of the soul.   In other words, while contemplating the Face of Jesus in an image, in the Word of God in the Scriptures, in a person made in the image and likeness of God, or above all, in the Eucharist, the soul places itself in the Presence of God.   When we are turned completely toward the Face of God, through a daily face-to-face encounter in prayer–by the power of the Holy Spirit–God gradually transforms the soul into the “True Image” of His Son, Jesus Christ.   As Pope St. John Paul II says, our hearts must become an “effigy of truth,” a “true icon.”  

Then our name too will be born from what we gaze upon.  It will be “Veronica.”