In San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone Calls Attention to the Feast of Omnis Terra and the Veil Bearing the Holy Face of Jesus

 (photo: Screenshot / Archdiocese of San Francisco)

Archbishop Cordileone at the Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello January 20, 2019
(Photo by Antonio Bini)

On January 20, 2019, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, together with Cardinal Gerhard Müller and Archbishop Bruno Forte celebrated Holy Mass at the Basilica Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello on the feast of Omnis Terra.   Exactly five years later, on January 20, 2024 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone began his homily during the annual Mass celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco just prior to the Walk for Life West Coast by drawing the attention of the faithful coming from all over the West Coast, who filled the massive church to overflowing, to the historical roots of the feast in Rome of Omnis Terra and its relationship with the veil bearing the Holy Face of Jesus. 

 

photo credit:  Jose Aguirre/Catholic San Francisco.

The Archbishop began:
"The entrance chant for our Mass today – “All the earth will worship you, O God, and will sing to you, sing to your name” – happens to be the same entrance chant prescribed for last Sunday’s Mass, the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, popularly referred to as “Omnis terra” Sunday, taken from the first words of the chant in Latin, as we just heard it at the beginning of Mass, “Omnis terra adoret te, Deus.” Every Mass has a prescribed entrance chant, usually a Scripture verse, very often from one of the Psalms, and the Mass gets its name from the first word or two of that chant (such as “Gaudete” Sunday and “Laetare” Sunday).

The Holy Face of Jesus

Why do I bring this up? It recalls a bit of Church history that underscores why Jesus came into the world. The story is told that in pre-Christian Rome the Emperor decided to have all Roman residents originally from other places take soil from their homeland and deposit it in a designated place close to the Vatican Hill, less than a quarter of a mile away. There he built a temple to honor the pagan Roman gods, as it contained soil from all the earth, “omnis terra.”

After Rome became Christian, the Pope built a church over that spot, which we know as the church of the Holy Spirit, and every year on that Sunday, “Omnis terra” Sunday, he would process from St. Peter’s Basilica to the church of the Holy Spirit with a veil bearing the face of Jesus. The veil in question was preserved from antiquity as one of the burial cloths that covered Jesus’ face, and was believed to be such an accurate representation of his face that it was called “the true icon of Rome,” in Latin, vera icona Romana: “vera icona,” whence the name, “Veronica.” This is how the story circulated later in the Middle Ages of a woman by that name who wiped our Lord’s face as he carried his Cross to Calvary.

There are many truly remarkable, even miraculous, features about this cloth that point to its authenticity, but that is a subject for another discourse. The point for us here today is that that procession instituted in the Middle Ages was to claim Jesus Christ as the one Savior of all the world, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the one, true God to whom all the earth owes worship and allegiance. This is the spiritual lesson of the ritual that developed around that veil.

The story of Veronica, though, also bears for us a spiritual message. As Pope St. John Paul II reflected in his meditation on the sixth Station of the Cross, every act of charity done in the name of Jesus Christ, with the spirit of his love, leaves the imprint of his image. This is how we translate the universality of the salvation Jesus won for us into language people can understand in our own time and place. The love of Christ is truly a universal language, understood everywhere and in every culture, leaving his image and thus changing both persons involved in that encounter of authentic Christian charity."

Archbishop Cordileone continued his homily giving a masterful explication of the Church's teaching on marriage and its meaning as seen in the Word of God and its centrality to the development of the human person.

The Archbishop concluded his homily:  

“All the earth will worship you, O God, and will sing to you, sing to your name.”  Let us be in that number, let us be among those who acknowledge Jesus Christ, God’s Only Begotten Son, as the one Savior of the world, the way, the truth and the life, the one who teaches us the path to the fullness of life.  Let us worship him by obeying his mother and do whatever he tells us: taking what he teaches us seriously, living it in our own vocations, and sharing his love through self-giving acts of charity to the hurting, the broken, and those living in darkness and the shadow of death, shining the healing light of his face upon them.  May God grant us this grace.  Amen."

link to the complete text of Archbishop Cordileone's homily https://sfarchdiocese.org/do-whatever-he-tells-you-and-you-will-spread-the-face-of-his-love-to-the-whole-world/

This year the Feast of Omnis Terra, presided by Archbishop Bruno Forte of the Diocese of Chieti-Vasto, with Holy Mass, procession and blessing with the Holy Face will be celebrated at the Shrine of the Holy Face of Manoppello on Sunday January 28.