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| Saint Scholastica, abbess and (blood) sister of Saint Benedict |
Lord, show us your face, and we shall be saved. (Psalm 80, v 20).
The Lord has shown us his face and completed the work of our salvation, and when that work is achieved in us, we will behold Him face to face. We know what the face of God looks like, but you notice that “face to face” necessarily involves more than one face, more than one person. How important our own faces are to the economy of salvation!
This week I saw an article online about a group of religious women in California I had never heard of before. The accompanying photographs showed them fully habited, in long white tunic and black veil and with what I believe is called a wimple under the veil and about their heads and hair, so that only their faces and hands were uncovered. Resembling as it did any number of ancient depictions of Christian women religious such as Saint Bridget or Saint Catherine of Siena, the habit emphasized the importance of their faces in a way that got my attention.
For millennia, souls who undertake to follow Christ more closely and conform their lives to Him in their embrace of the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, and obedience) have very often assumed distinctive clothing. That garb has rarely, if ever, included face covering.
When Christian modesty and humility are fully embraced, the face is fully revealed, and perhaps even accentuated. How important our faces are to our relationships with one another and with God!
Our recent experience with widespread and even mandatory covering of faces revealed or at least reminded us of the importance of face-to-face contact among human beings in order for us to be human. Children from birth discern their own existence and experiences through the faces first of their mothers, then of other family members who respond to their presence with visible delight. A mother’s love shines on her newborn child in and through her face. A child learns both to smile and to love by beholding both the smile and the love in the faces open before his eyes. For years thereafter, the developing child is attentive to and even dependent on the faces of people with whom he interacts.
Medical masks in their proper setting can be reassuring even as they handicap the communication that must be undertaken in those settings. While a masquerade can be a ball and such masks play a role in a comedy of mistaken identity, masks in American culture were long the mark of bandits or burglars and others about nefarious business. A covered face encountered where unexpected is an obscured identity and intention, a cause for confusion, and possibly concern or caution.
In looking about the world as we see it through the images that come to us through our most familiar technology, it is easy to identify the cultures that are rooted in Christianity not only by the visibility of the faces of people, but also by the emphasis upon their importance. The less individuality and personality are held in esteem, the more frequently faces are covered or hidden.
Salvation itself, heaven as we call it, involves both seeing and being seen, knowing as we are known. For this our faces are as indispensable as the face we behold. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
Monsignor Smith
