Be sure to read the amazing conclusion provided by Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, after the following letter to Him was written.
Humble, Gentle, and Patiently Suffering Jesus,
The barbaric treatment You willingly endured during every moment of the journey along the Way of Sacrificial Love to mankind's redemption on Calvary has passed, but Your Passion and Death is not bound by time and space.
Your suffering continued after Your death, continues in the present moment, and will continue until the end of time.
How much You love us, how much You yearn for us to accept Your love, completely and without reservation! How sorrowful You are because so often, we are willing to settle for so little.
How You continue to be insulted and injured by our behavior, especially by blasphemy, profanity, and the various attacks on God which (try to) destroy what belongs to God:
The misuse of or profaning of God's Holy Name.
The taking of Your name out of Christmas!
Speaking of You, Your love, Your plans, Your sacrifice, Your Church, Your servants and Your creation cavalierly or with malice.
The desire of some men to remove Your Most Holy Name from currency, when everything rightly belongs to You.
The refusal to allow children, teachers, and parents to speak to You in prayer and about you to one another in our public schools, institutions, businesses, and the willingness of so many to comply with this injustice.
It is not possible to remove You from anything, and yet at times our hearts refuse to worship, honor, and praise You. This deception finds its expression, or lack of expression, on our very lips and within our homes, at work, in public places, during recreation or while at rest.
How often Your Face is struck in Your very own House as people gossip or seek to use others instead of singing Your praises, encouraging others, or offering a compassionate word to those around them in need. How many times You want us to bring Your love and compassion to others and we regard them as invisible because we only see our own wants and needs.
All things come from You and You showed us how to behave, Jesus!
"A new commandment I give to you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another (John 13:34)."
Yet, despite what our choices cost You Jesus, You love us constantly, forgive us constantly, guide us constantly, and remain with us always.
You even offer us the Blood shed in our places as a bath for our souls; this remedy is so powerful that just one Drop contains an ocean of mercy.
How often we use others over and over and over again, and think we fool You by committing this act of treason in Your very Name! We fool only ourselves, Lord, for nothing is hidden from Your light.
And yet Your hope is not to punish, it is to forgive. Your design is not that we remain guilty, but that we remain forgiven, because the greatest longing of the greatest Lover is to be accepted into every human heart.
So many times we fail to thank You, seek Your counsel, or speak the loving words You so long to hear from us in return, the very words of worship and praise You are due as our Creator!
May we always use our lips to praise you, worship You, to bring Your love to others, to proclaim the truth, to serve, and to lead precious, immortal souls to Your Sacred Heart.
I left one thing out, my sweet Jesus. May we use our lips every single day to kiss Your Sacred Face!
Just One Kiss for Jesus is of Inestimable Worth
The next time you are assisting at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or are making a Holy Hour, or an examination of conscience, during your next Sacramental Confession, while praying, when you are lonely, when someone asks for your intercession, in good times, in crisis, or any time you are thinking of God or anything else, make it a point to kiss the Sacred and offended Face of Jesus!
Every single kiss of yours is of inestimable worth; every single kiss pleases and consoles our suffering Lord more than we can ever imagine.
Kiss Jesus on the cheek in reparation for Judas' kiss of betrayal, and for the many other kisses of betrayal He received since and is yet to receive.
Show Jesus compassion and love in reparation for the insults against His majesty and assaults on Love, and pray for all precious, immortal souls through all time.
Every one of us has struck Jesus in the face at one time or another, or spit in His face, or kissed Him with malice in our hearts by our sins of omission or commission.
Make it a point to kiss the Sacred Face of Jesus to show your love for Him and to offer reparation for crimes against His love.
Kiss Jesus because He deserves it, because it delights Him, and to show your gratitude to Him for loving us all so much.
One single kiss of yours on the Sacred Face of Jesus means so much to Him and is of inestimable worth.
Have you ever considered what it means to kiss Jesus even one time?
Did you know that He kisses you?
Kiss the insulted and injured Face of Jesus and return to Him the honor due our King. Taste His Sacred Blood on your lips; taste His Sweat as He suffers.
Taste His Sacred Tears, whose genesis is a love we cannot possibly fathom. His Tears are mixture of sorrow, sweat, and Blood, and just one drop of this sacred elixir is enough to purchase the redemption of all of humanity.
The purposeful journey of the sacrificial drops are stopped by your lips on their way down His disfigured Face. Feel the warmth of Tears that were just shed an instant ago from His pierced and suffering Eyes. He is yet living, and yet He lives still!
Taste the dirt and the dust thrown in His face then and through all time by those who hate Him and reject Him.
Your kiss also transfers to your lips the malicious spit of so many men, people eager to condemn the innocent while rejecting their own salvation and sanctification.
There are so many ways we spit in our Lord's Face. Imagine Jesus having to endure that only once. It is absolutely unthinkable. Sweet and gentle Jesus, how much loving us has cost You!
Our beautiful Jesus longs for us to kiss His Sacred Face, which He allowed
to be so disfigured by our sins as to make Him unrecognizable.The collective taste of His Blood, Tears, Sweat, dirt, dust, rocks, and the spit of countless people throughout history, and yet to come, combine into the strongest substance known to man: sacrificial love.
This mystical blending of so many things that came together during our redemption and bought our liberation, this mixture that you taste on your lips following Your act of love, kindness, humility, compassion, and surrender, is the most powerful force in the universe.
When you kiss Jesus, allow this force to bind you to Him forever.
Imagery to Help Make Your Kisses More Meaningful
Consider for a moment this scene from the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, during the Scourging of His Sacred Body at the Pillar, from The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations from the Visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich: 1
"Jesus trembled and shuddered before the pillar...He prayed and implored so touchingly...Our Lord and Savior, the Son of god, true God and true Man, quivered and writhed like a poor worm under the strokes of the criminals' rods. He cried in a suppressed voice, and a clear, sweet-sounding wailing, like a loving prayer under excruciating torture, formed a touching accompaniment to the hissing strokes of His tormentors (p. 206-207).
"They had been at work about a quarter of an hour when they eased to strike, and joined two of the others in drinking. Jesus' body was livid, brown, blue, and red, and entirely covered with swollen cuts. His sacred blood was running down on the ground. He trembled and shuddered. Derision and mockery assailed Him on all sides" (p. 208).
"One (scourger) held a slender rod in his left hand and with it struck the face of Jesus. There was no longer a sound spot on the Lord's Body. He glanced, with eyes swimming in blood, at His torturers, and sued for mercy; but they became only the more enraged...The terrible scourging had lasted fully three-quarters of an hour... (pp. 209-210).
Join Him at the Pillar
Be there and witness Jesus' scourging at the pillar. He asks nothing of you except that you keep Him company.
As Jesus turns His Face, His suffering eyes meet yours. How clear yours are compared with His, which are filled with blood, tears, dirt and dust, and spit. He looks at you and communicates unconditional and eternal love to you, not anger, hate, or resentment. In that profoundly meaningful moment, your eyes are transformed and you gaze at your afflicted Lord through eyes that reflect your suffering for Him.
As His Sacred and Innocent Face is scourged in your place, you break from the crowd watching this injustice and position yourself between the torturers and Jesus. By shielding His Face, you have positioned yours in harm’s way. As you do so, you also see all the people through all time that also leave the crowd and accept Christ's magnificent offer of salvation and sanctification. Together with them, you accept a share in this precious suffering.
As all those people stand between Jesus and the blows and accept them upon their own faces, their countenances are transformed into the likeness of Jesus. They become living representations of the Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, which the Lord Himself called “the most wonderful work under the sun.”
When you receive the Lord’s Precious Body in Holy Communion, be there again at the moment when His face was scourged at the pillar. His Sacred Blood is pooled in His Mouth. When you receive the Precious Body and Blood of our Savior you resemble Him again, for His Sacred Blood reposes in your mouth. At that moment you are united to Jesus in Holy Communion, in suffering (at the pillar), and in mankind's redemption.
Sacrificial love in imitation of Christ is so powerful that the very gates
of hell cannot prevail against it.Sacrificial love is so strong that the bonds formed by it cannot ever be broken.
Sacrificial love transforms lives, and souls, forever and ever. The devil knows it, and that is why he tries so hard to get us to think about things besides Jesus and meditating on Christ's Passion.
Take at least a moment, every single day, to meditate on Christ's Passion and Death and on your redemption. Kiss the Sacred Face of your Redeemer throughout the day in reparation for the sins that caused Him such unfathomable suffering.
Allow yourself to be transformed into His image and likeness, and become a living Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.
Delight Jesus with your kisses! Make them incredibly meaningful, deeply personal, and very, very powerful. Then, be even more delighted as He kisses you back!
© Joseph Karl Publishing/Michele Bondi Bottesi
To learn more about the Devotion to the Holy Face,
which Jesus Himself called "the most beautiful work under the sun,"
Offering of the Holy Face of
Our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father
in Order to Appease His Justice
and Draw Down Mercy Upon Us
________________
Sources:
1. As Recorded in the Journals of Clemens Brentano, Arranged and Edited By the Very Reverend Carl E. Schmoger, S.SS.R., The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations from the Visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich (Rockford: IL: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 2004).
Images taken at Ss. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church, Sterling Heights, Michigan, U.S.A., in the Archdiocese of Detroit.
Images by Joseph Karl Publishing.