Seek the Face of the Lord

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • St. Josaphat Formation Center, Phoenix, AZ

The Psalmist exhorts us on several occasions to “Seek out the Lord and his might, constantly seek his face.” (Ps 105:4) According to Hebrew idiom, to “seek the face of the Lord” is to long to be in His presence. It is fundamentally an exhortation to strive to come into and remain in God’s Presence – our eternal destiny. Yet devotionally for us here, there is something very personal and direct about looking into the face of the Person of Christ. It gives the sense of undivided attention and deep personal relationship and so is a special ideal for our spiritual life. St. John Paul II made this exhortion the mandate for the Church in the third Millenia. 

The Lord would not inspire or command us to do anything that wouldn’t be possible and, by commanding it, He, in fact, makes it readily attainable. There have been many devotional images of the face of the Lord throughout history – some of them very ancient and remarkable. The most famous icon of the Lord is of Christ the Pantocrator, or “Ruler of all”, whose oldest preserved copy dates back to the 6th Century at St. Catherine Monastery in the Sinai. It is of Christ holding the Gospels in one hand while blessing with the other and it has a very clear image of His Face.

Another less known but still remarkable image of the face of Christ is the Holy Face of Manoppello. It is a small cloth, approximately 7 inches by 9¹⁄₂ inches, with the effigy of a long haired man with a broken nose, bloodstained forehead, swollen cheeks, and dark bruises covering his face. His eyes are wide open and his mouth seems to be about to speak. It is thought to be the veil of Veronica which she used to wipe the face of the Savior on His way to Calvary. Recent Popes have visted Manoppello as have many devoted pilgrims. There is something special about the Holy Face of Manoppello.

In 1898, Secondo Pia took the very first photograph of another better known image, the Shroud of Turin. Pia noticed that his photograph showed a positive image of
a human face. Since that first primitive photograph, more sophisticated digital photographs have been taken of both the Shroud of Turin and the Veil of Manoppello.
The expert iconographer B. Paschalis Schlomer placed both the digital images of the two faces one upon the other showing that their transparent data-points fit together perfectly! And it doesn’t stop there: art experts studying the faces of the Veil of Manoppello and that of the Shroud conclude that the face is remarkably similar to that of the Pantocrator!

Seek and you shall find, said the Lord.