-Traditional Catholic (Sedevacantist) Priest-
Fr. Vili Lehtoranta
MY VOCATION IS LOVE
My new book, published in August 2024, tells about Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and the Holy Face devotion. Saint Thérèse was a constant source of joy to her Sisters in the convent. But only very few, among them her blood sister Céline, knew that behind the joy and laughter there was a perpetual state of sadness.
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Saint Thérèse once said to another Sister: “I used to force myself to smile in order that God, as though deceived by my countenance, should not suspect that I was suffering.” It was through her devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus how Saint Thérèse conquered her sadness and depression. She identified herself with the “man of sorrows,” unrecognized and alone, and with Saint Joan of Arc, suffering alone in prison. The book also gives the short history how Popes have approved the Holy Face devotion in the public worship of the Church, because some Traditional Catholics mistakenly believe, that this devotion, so dear to Saint Thérèse, has been forbidden by the Church.
Our children, then, are not the children of the State. The State has no children, and never had, nor will. The State does not own them, nor their fathers nor mothers, nor anybody else in this country, thank God! We have not got that far yet on the road to civil slavery, and I hope we never shall. We are not Pagans, nor Mahometans, nor Russians. We have not sold out, and don’t intend to! It is not on the State, but on parents, that God imposed the duty to educate their children, a duty from which no State can dispense, nor can fathers and mothers relieve themselves of this duty by the vicarious assumption of the State. They have to give a severe account of their children on the Day of Judgment, and they cannot allow any power to disturb them in insisting upon their rights and making free use of them.
- Fr. Michael Muller: Public School Education (1872)
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Only under the shadow of the Cross, watered by our Lord’s tears and his precious blood, with his adorable Face for its sun, that Face overcast with sorrow. Till then, I’d never realized the depth of meaning there was in devotion to the Holy Face; it’s to you, Mother, that I owe my fuller knowledge of it. Just as you were the first of us to join Carmel, so you were the first of us to sound the mystery of that love which the face of Jesus Christ conceals and reveals; and now you called me to your side, and I understood it all. I understood the true object of human ambition; our Lord hadn’t wanted any kingdom in this world, and he shewed me that “if you want to learn an art worth knowing, you must set out to be unknown, and to count for nothing;” you must find your satisfaction in self-contempt. If only my face could be hidden away, like his, pass unrecognized by the world; to suffer and to remain unnoticed, that was all I longed for.
- From Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (The Story of a Soul)
