Saint Veronica

A holy woman wipes the face of Jesus. J-J Tissot

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)

Jesus is still painfully toiling up the long narrow street skirting the longer one of the inner walls of the town and leading up to Calvary.  The higher He climbs the more slowly He goes.  He is panting for breath beneath His load, in spite of the help of the Cyrenian.  From time to time He is compelled to pause, altogether overwhelmed with fatigue and exhausted from the loss of so much blood.

Tradition now intervenes with a touching story of how a lady of Jerusalem, a great lady connected with many of the chief Jewish families and, moreover, secretly in intimate relations with the family and friends of Jesus, approached the Sufferer, eager to do something to console Him.  According to some accounts, her name was Berenice, but Catherine Emmerich speaks of her as Sieraphia, the wife of Sirach, a member of the Sanhedrim.  Whatever her original name may have been, however, she has ever since been known in Catholic tradition by the symbolic title of Veronica, from the words vera icon, signifying true portrait, and referring to the miracle said to have been affected by her means.

Learning that the procession would pass her house, this good woman determined to seize the opportunity of showing once more her reverence and compassion for the Master.  She had prepared a cordial which should restore His strength, and just as the group of which the Lord was the central Figure was passing her door, she issued from her house, which was on the left side of the street, so as to meet Him face to face.  "She was veiled", says Catherine Emmerich, "and a piece of linen hung from her shoulders; a little girl of nine years old followed her, and she waited as the procession advanced towards her, holding a vessel full of wine hidden beneath the mantle.

Those who were marching at the head of the procession tried in vain to drive her back.  Inspired by love and by compassion she forced her way, with the child clinging to her robes, through the mob, the soldiers and the archers, till she got close to Jesus, when she flung herself on her knees before Him, offering Him the linen, saying: "Permit me to wipe the face of my Saviour." Jesus took the linen in His left hand and applied it to His bleeding Face; He then pressed it a little between that hand and the right, which was holding the Cross, and gave it back to Seraphia, thanking her for it.

Now Jesus, wishing to recompense Seraphia for this act of pious pity, had so used the linen cloth that, with the blood from His wounds which filled all the hollows of His face, His beard, His eyebrows and His nostrils, He had produced the perfect likeness of His features upon the surface of the cloth.  No doubt the linen was in this case a kind of veil of very fine material such as Jewish women were in the habit of wearing on the head and shoulders.  Saint Veronica treasured it up with pious reference, handing it over later to the care of the Church, and it is now preserved and shown to the faithful at Rome.

It is only fair to add that to other Holy Faces similar to the one just described are shown, one at Jerusalem, the other in Spain.  Father Calmet is of opinion that these are impressions from the first taken, or original vera icon.  Several other impressions of a similar kind are venerated in various places.  At Besançon, before the Revolution, a shroud was preserved and honoured as bearing an impression of the whole body of the Lord, and at Carpentras, in the south of France, there is, I believe yet another such shroud.  As is well known, the body of Jesus was wrapped in shrouds, each of which would, of course, retain the impression of His sacred form.

The Holy Face. J-J Tissot

"After Veronica had wiped the face of the Master", continues Catherine Emmerich, "the young girl timidly raised a vessel of wine towards Jesus, but the archers and soldiers with insulting words prevented Him from receiving that refreshment.  It had been thanks only to her great boldness and to the fact that the crowd had for a moment arrested the progress of the procession that Seraphia had managed to offer the linen cloth.  The Pharisees and archers, enraged at the halt and that the public homage rendered to the Saviour, now began to goad and strike Him, whilst Veronica withdrew into her house.  She had scarcely re-entered her chamber and laid the linen cloth on the table, before she fainted away and the little girl fell on her knees beside her, weeping burning tears.  A friend of the house found them thus, with the linen cloth unfolded, on which was impressed the remarkably lifelike likeness of the bleeding face of Jesus.  Terrified at what he saw, the friend restored Veronica to consciousness and showed her the portrait of the Saviour.  She fell on her knees before it crying: "Now I will forsake everything, for the SavioUr has honored me with a memorial of Him."

In the account of all this given by the clairvoyante, Anne Catherine Emmerich, other more or less probable details are given on the subject of Veronica.  "She was", says this seer of visions, "a relation of John the Baptist; her father and Zacharias were cousins-german.  She was at least five years older than the Virgin and was present at her marriage with Saint Joseph.  She was also related to the aged Simeon and played with his sons from their earliest infancy.  The sonss looked, as did their father, for the coming of the Messiah, and Seraphia shared their longing.  When Jesus, at the age of 12 years, was teaching in the Temple, Seraphia, who was not yet married, sent some food for Him to the house of one of the Essenes situated about a quarter of a league from the town, for He used to retire to it when not in the Temple. Later Seraphia married Sirach, who was descended from the chaste Susanna.  He was a member of the great Sanhedrim, and had had first been very much opposed to Jesus.  Seraphia had to suffer many things at his hands because of her devotion to the Saviour.  Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus converted Sirach to a better way of thinking, and he permitted his wife to follow the teachings of Jesus."

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam