The Image of God in the Seeking of Man

St. John Paul II describes how, in the story of the two disciples en route to Emmaus, the Church “contemplates the face of the Risen One”. “In retracing this journey, we too are joined by the mysterious traveling Companion,” he explained. He then went on to note though, that, when, after this encounter, Jesus turns the disciples back toward Jerusalem, he “does something more” than explain and reveal the stakes and shape of human life on its road to glory:

“...he breaks the bread of sharing for us, offering that Eucharistic Table in which the Scriptures acquire their full meaning and reveal the unique and shining features of the Redeemer’s face. After recognizing and contemplating the face of the risen Christ, we too, like the two disciples, are asked to run to our brothers and sisters to bring everyone the great news: ‘We have seen the Lord!’ (Jn 20: 25).”

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I sometimes think that so much of the meaning of this story is revealed in the meaning of the disciples’ destinations, before and after Christ’s mysterious appearance on the scene. In its etymology, the root word of Emmaus signifies not only “hot springs,” but also “to be hot” - a phrase apparently implying not only physical heat, but mental agitation, anxiety, unrest, and even anger or rage. The hot springs were also, of course, known to be places of healing. On the other hand, the word Jerusalem’s etymology can apparently be taken beyond the familiar meaning of city of truth, or place of peace. Broken down further, it may literally translate to “they will see the wholeness” or “they will feel the awe of completeness” (ye-ru meaning they will see or will feel the awe of; and sha-lem meaning completeness or wholeness, from which arises the word shalom, that is, peace).

So, the disciples were walking towards what they felt would give them healing, what they felt would solve their problems - mental agitation, anxiety, unrest, and even anger (as we see from their agitated and anxious conversation). They were on the road to that which springs from heat. And then Jesus entered the conversation. And as day turned to evening, the disciples were converted. They allowed the heat of the day to pass. They entered into His rest, a rest in which they “recognized and contemplated his face”. And now, they are on a different road. They are going now where“they will see the wholeness, where they will feel the awe of the completeness.”

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Imagine Veronica pushing through all this heat. The day was hot. The crowd was hot. Imagine Veronica pushing through the hot crowd and the hot day to get to Christ. Imagine a woman with a strange desire, a strange and powerful desire, to push through and against a mob of conflicting persons, joined in harrowing chorus, to push through them, to push through deafening din, and confusion, and bloodlust, the condemnation of Christ that was, in reality, the crowd’s self- condemnation, its confession of sickness and sin, imagine a woman pushing through the very lowest human instinct, being jostled, and stepped on, and shoved back, and still pushing forward, driven by that, as I’ve said, strange and powerful desire to do what, exactly? To save Christ? To defend him with great rhetoric? To stage a massive heroic deed?

No...

Only to wipe and cool his face...
Only to show some human kindness...
Only to let bloom one dark violet of quiet in a hot noon of sinister noise...

I have got to get to Him, felt Veronica, I have got to tell Him that He is loved...

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“I seek Veronicas,” Jesus said to Sr. Marie of St. Peter when he revealed to her the need for and power of the devotion we now contemplate - the devotion to the Holy Face. But what does it mean to contemplate the Holy Face? To devote ourselves to it?

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As a young woman, I would go to adoration with my mother. It was one of the things which she would ask that I would always say yes to, no matter what time of night. Often, therefore, it would be late at night, even an early hour of morning, that I would drowsily deposit myself in the car and let myself be taken to the little side chapel, which we entered through a door for which she had a code, a code that remained a mystery to me. Also a mystery to me, the dark chapel punctuated by a bit of candle light - the few mainly empty pews - the person who would shortly rise after we entered, passing the baton in this relay of perpetual adoration - the host exposed silently in its golden chamber - or was it hidden? I can’t quite recall, it was dark, and I too was hidden, often lying down behind my mother as she knelt and prayed, enveloped in the dark, mysterious embrace that I would come to know was what it feels like when He gazes upon you, and holds you in that gaze.

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The Holy Face. Where do we even find it? How do we we seek it out? Is it the literal face of Christ, the man’s face, in its specificity of dimension, form, shape - its cheekbone and curve of lip and forehead, its eyebrow, its slope and softness, its firmness and grace? What do you look like, Oh Lord?

Is it the Christ we see in others? The way the eyes of the other sometimes reveal their true dimension, reveal that indwelling too often hidden or avoided? Is it the Christ we see in suffering or the Christ we see in joy? What is this Holy Face? Where is this Holy Face?

Our Lady of La Salette told little Maxime and Melanie that utter contempt for God, the constant blasphemy, and the desecration of the Lord’s Day were grave insults to His Face. Perhaps, we are a bit too coy if we ask ourselves, but where is this Holy Face? How do I find it so I can venerate it? Perhaps we are deceiving ourselves to say we do not know; for as our Blessed Mother reveals, and convicts in her revelation, we find His Holy Face easily enough when we wish to profane it.

Spit is not a very large thing. Spit is a little thing that bears within it a profound and massive violence. And Our Lady of La Salette spoke of all the “little things” we do to profane Jesus, to spit upon His Holy Face. Not honoring the Sabbath. Engaging in and allowing blasphemies of all kinds in the most casual and consistent manner. Abiding with and in secular relativism. Whenever we do these things, we have found Our Lord’s Face — and have chosen a cruel, and unspeakable reaction to it. These blasphemies and profanations are the often “small”, and always profound, violences that are the very opposite of Veronica’s professions of love.

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We want to know Christ. We want to see God’s face. We beg that it might “shine upon us” and our families and loved ones, upon our respective countries and careers, upon our paths, our hopes, our dreams. We long for a heaven where this Face that has shone upon us, even then multiplies this honor beyond all reasonable hope, and utterly unveils itself to us, so that we might fully know it, so that we might fully know and see the Face of God.

But a face is not a revelation. A face is itself a veiling. It is the way in which a life, a soul, in its expression, is given form and shape, so that what is within might be communicated outwardly to another. Which is to say, if we don’t love God in His formlessness, how can we dream we will love him in His form? If we don’t honor the Truth, we won’t honor the Face that speaks the Truth.

The pursuit of God, the seeking after His Face, the seeking after Him - is a bid for being with God, for being able to be in conversation and communication directly with Him - to know and be known totally in that love - to be seen by that which loves you so much, it took shape merely to meet your gaze in the blessing of benediction. A worthy seeking, to say the least. But the beauty, sincerity, and grace of that human seeking may in some sense be judged by its intention.

Veronica sought out Christ’s Holy Face with a simple, beautiful intention - to wipe that face and kiss it and care for it, to gaze into Christ’s eyes and give forth the poverty of her reassurance, the poverty of her love, heedless of that poverty, because the only thing that mattered to Veronica was expressing her love for Him...

And that’s what a face is for, isn’t it? To express and to receive a message, a gift; to communicate love. We rest in the contemplation of a face. There is nothing worthy to be done with a face, but to take it in, to delight in it, to rest in it, to love it, to caress it, to care for it, to let two sets of eyes meet. Anything else is violence. When we ask Mother Mary to show unto us the fruit of her womb, are we aware of the tremendous thing we are requesting? We are asking Mary to trust us with the Son we only lately crucified. When we ask God, to shine His face upon us, we are asking God to turn His face to us, moments after we have abused it. We are saying we can, in spite of our past sins and habits, be trusted with this gift. When we earnestly seek after Devotion to the Holy Face, we are freely and beautifully assenting to a purification that will make us worthy of that gorgeous trust - so that a Mother can softly show unto us her precious child; so that God might bid us to draw near to see, and even stroke, His Face.

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Think again of Veronica. To seek out His Holy Face like Veronica is itself the very essence of prayer. It is a quiet, persistent adoration that cuts through the interior crowd of sinful thought and habit, that cuts through and slowly defeats sin, defeats everything blocking the way to Christ, and that culminates in a victory that is as weightless as a whisper, and as powerful as anything we have ever dreamed. To meet Christ’s gaze, and to love that gaze so much, you can’t stop your hand from reaching out to wipe his brow, to comfort him - to find your instinct transformed and purified from an instinct of violence and blasphemy and disregard to one of a consolation so powerful it could comfort Christ himself.

To then let Christ, in this consolation, sink his very being into the cloth of veneration you offer - which might be understood to be the material words of prayer itself - and to allow him, so doing, to impress his visage upon it. So that, every time thereafter you lift those simple, material words to Heaven, they will bear the Son’s very face. So that, from then on, these materials words, will be spoken to God the Father through his Son’s face, through his Son’s lips - your prayer will forever bear witness to and be spoken through the very Face of Christ.

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When we cultivate our inner Veronica and pursue Christ’s face with holy intention, we profess through our actions a reversal of values that is itself a revelation of the true meaning of things — it is the crux on the Way to the Cross, the turning point; it is the image of peace pursuing its origin and end, undetterred and unseduced by a chaos that contradicts; imagine the dove flying through the winds of a mighty storm, and never dropping its branch; a whisper unquieted by a roar; a coolness in the face of heat; Calvary become consolation; Emmaus become Jerusalem; agitation become trust. When Veronica’s hand first shot through the last barrier at the edge of the crowd, did Christ recognize even just that lovely hand, that he himself had formed? Did his heart, as she crawled and tumbled forward onto the road, exclaim: She made it! My little dove! The one who I have been expecting...

What immense joy to see the girl he knew was coming for him, with a sign of peace, a sign of love - born of an impulse he recognized, because he had placed it within her heart, from the very beginning? Veronica, I was expecting you, he might have said, maybe not in words, but in his eyes, in the way his face received her. He had had great faith in her, and she had risen to the call of that faith - she had fulfilled her vocation - just by pushing through to do this tiny, true, simple, good act - to love him in the midst of everything that said she shouldn’t. To adore His face, and be devoted to it, no matter how loud and hot the lie that tried to separate child from Father. To enter into this eucharistic adoration, parent, maybe, of all the adorations to come, where not only his body, but his very Face was simultaneously exposed, exalted, communicated, expressed, hidden, revealed. To seek his gaze and be held by that gaze in the dark, mysterious chapel formed by the shadow of the cross now looming over them both. And in all of this, Veronica, in her actions - in the prayer that pursued and the rest that received - set forth one of the most masterful renderings of the Holy Face that the world has ever known - for in her simple, dogged, persistent seeking of her loved one, she gave to the world forever the true image (vera-icon) of Christ - He who, in every moment, simply, doggedly, persistently...seeks us.

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