Shrove Tuesday: the Holy Face signals a sense of glory to come

Of you my heart has spoken: “Seek his face.” It is your face, O Lord, that I seek; hide not your face. (Psalm 26:8-9)

Today is Shrove Tuesday at last, or least I hope this is the beginning of a good, serious observance of Lent. The monks here have sung as many Alleluias as possible before they are packaged up and placed in the closet for 40 days (save an exception or two). 

A liturgical feast that is little known of here in the USA is that of the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus. Certainly in Rome and in other places around the globe the Church’s Liturgy provides an opportunity, the grace to seek the face of God in Christ. The psalmody and other readings of Scripture point us in this direction. Some have called today’s feast a  flash of paschal glory before beginning Lent because there is the sense that what was prepared for us in the Transfiguration will happen on calvary and then in the resurrection. Our prayer for this final day of the Liturgy through the Year before the season of holy Lent is:

O God, who willed that your only-begotten Son should become man, and show us in his human nature a perfect image of your divinity, grant, we beseech you, that by venerating the image of his Holy Face we may be united with him in the mysteries of his Passion and Death, and so come to contemplate forever his glorious Face in the joy of the resurrection.

Let us pray for each other this Lent. I need your prayers.