The Golden Arrow Holy Face Devotion is a prayer associated with a Roman Catholic devotion. The prayer and the devotion are based on reports of visions of by Jesus to Sr. Marie of St Peter, a Carmelite nun of Tours, in 1843. The prayer is an Act of Praise and Reparation for Blasphemy. It is also a reparation for the profanation of Sunday and the Holy Days of Obligation.
On March 16, 1844 Jesus reportedly told Sr. Marie:
"Oh if you only knew what great merit you acquire by saying even once, Admirable is the Name of God, in a spirit of reparation for blasphemy."
Sister Mary stated that Jesus told her that the two sins which offend him the most grievously are blasphemy and the profanation of Sunday. He called this prayer the "Golden Arrow", saying that those who would recite it would pierce Him delightfully, and also heal those other wounds inflicted on Him by the malice of sinners. Sr. Mary of St. Peter saw, "streaming from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, delightfully wounded by this 'Golden Arrow,' torrents of graces for the conversion of sinners.
This prayer is part of the Roman Catholic devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus and appears in the book “The Golden Arrow”, the autobiography of Sr. Marie of St Peter. In her book she wrote that in her visions Jesus told her that an act of sacrilege or blasphemy is like a "poisoned arrow", hence the name “Golden Arrow” for this reparatory prayer.
Words of the prayer:
- May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable,
- most incomprehensible and ineffable Name of God
- be forever praised, blessed, loved, adored
- and glorified in Heaven, on earth,
- and under the earth,
- by all the creatures of God,
- and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
- in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
- Amen.
Famous quotes containing the words golden, arrow, holy, face and/or devotion:
“I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks;—and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“O Russia! O my wife! Our long and narrow Road lies clear though distressed.
Our road with an old Tatar freedom’s arrow Has deeply pierced our breast.”
—Alexander Blok (1880–1921)
“In sober mornings do not thou rehearse
The holy incantation of a verse;”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)