Sister Mary of St Peter

In France in the 1840s there was a young Carmelite nun with an urgent mission. Jesus afforded her intellectual visions so she might found a movement devoted to His Holy Face with precise instructions as to how to propagate it. Her name was Sr Mary of St Peter and her own face bore the blemish of flames, because when she was a baby, she had fallen into in a fire.

Sr Mary of St Peter met her mother superior and told her that the Lord wished for souls to do spiritually the pious office of Veronica who had caressed His Face with her veil as he carried His cross through the jeering mob. Souls could offer the prayers Our Lord had given Sr Mary of St Peter, so that atonement could be made for the sin of blasphemy where people insult Our Lord to His Face by taking His Name in vain.

At the very moment Sr Mary of St Peter spoke of the messages she’d received, a holy picture honouring the Holy Name tumbled out of a book she held. The astonished mother superior said that had she not known Sr Mary of St Peter’s true character, she’d have thought her a witch. But Sr Mary of St Peter was known to speak the unvarnished truth and was so serious about her salvation that her superior took it as a sign and gave her the necessary permission.

In 1843, Our Lord gave Sr Mary of St Peter the Chaplet of the Holy Face wherein the verse from psalm 67 is repeated 33 times: “Arise, O Lord, and let Thy enemies be scattered and let all that hate Thee flee before Thy Face.” Our Lord willed that this be offered as a way of attending to His Face, that devotees to His Face may repair the damage done by blasphemy, otherwise “the malice of revolutionary men” was to be visited upon humanity.

Our Lord expressly warned Sr Mary of St Peter about the threat of Communism, more than six decades before the Red Army took control in Russia. Ever battle-ready, Sr Mary of St Peter said: “God has commanded me to cross swords with the Communists” and she explained that the Lord called them, “the sworn enemies of the Church”. Our Lord instructed Sr Mary of St Peter to make known that blasphemy and the profanation of Sunday are great sins that harm the Holy Face; her also urged the founding of confraternities devoted to the Holy Face.

St Therese of Lisieux was greatly moved by th message of Sr Mary of St Peter. She and her family joined a fledgling confraternity, 140 years ago, in 1885, and later after St Therese had read the life of the feisty Breton Carmelite, did added “the Holy Face” to her name.

Through all this, we understand that the language Our Lord employed and in which the Sr Mary of St Peter’s pamphlets and prayers were first published was French. Sr Mary of St Peter only spoke her earthy Breton dialect with its Cornish roots, and French. When I’ve written about this sublime devotion and talked to others, they ask why Our Lord did not speak in Russia and in Russian?

Let’s remember this was the 1800s, when French was the language of the educated class in Russia. The empress of Russia, Catherine the Great had made it the official language of the Russian Court and from then any social climber worth their salt did their utmost to learn it. In Moscow there was a huge appetite for French publications of all sorts, and the middle classes competed among themselves as to who was the most knowledgeable in French affairs. During her lifetime, had the revelations of the power of making reparation to the Holy Face made a bigger noise in France, it would have resounded off the walls of many a Russian home.

French was said to be losing its grip on the Russian psyche, but not as quickly as some imagine. Around 20 years after Sr Mary of St Peter died, Dostoevsky finished The Idiot, a novel so filled with French it can sound like it was set in a suburb of Paris. Despite being from from a lower-middle class background even Dostoevsky used French such was the influence of French culture in Russia.

I believe that when Russia is converted, the country will pick up the thread from the 1800s and look to the key French influences in Catholicism of that time; we may yet live to see Sr Mary of St Peter become a saint based on miracles awarded modern Russians.

I’d like to thank the readers of Mass of Ages for their prayers over the many years it has taken me to write my book, Padre Pio and You. It is being published by Sophia Press and will be available on 17 June.