Mid-19th Century: Sister Mary of Saint Peter and the Venerable Leo Dupont

In the mid-19th century, in Tours, France, a Carmelite nun named Sister Marie de Saint Pierre (1816-1848) received a private revelation from Our Lord that "Those who will contemplate the wounds on My Face here on earth, shall contemplate it radiant in heaven." In her vision, she was transported to the road to Calvary and saw St. Veronica wiping away the spit and mud from His Holy Face with her veil. Sister realized that the taking of the Name of God in vain and all the other sacrilegious and blasphemous acts that men do fall on the Lord's Face like that spit and mud that St. Veronica so lovingly wiped away. Jesus revealed to Sister that He desired devotion to His Holy Face in reparation for sacrilege, the profanation of Sundays, and blasphemy, which He described to her as being like a "poisoned arrow." To her He dictated the prayer which has become known as "The Golden Arrow" and which honors His Holy Name:

The Golden Arrow

May the most Holy, most Sacred, most Adorable, Most Incomprehensible and Ineffable Name of God Be always 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.

At around the time Sister was receiving her visions, into Tours from Martinique moved the saintly Monsieur Leo Dupont (1797-1876), a man whose young wife had died and whose daughter God also took in this interesting way: she'd begun moving about in "fashionable circles" and taking on a worldly air that caused M. Dupont to worry about her eternal welfare, so much so that he prayed, "My God, if You foresee that my daughter will part from You, I ask you to take her with You so that she will not be separated from You." His daughter soon died of typhoid. Though tormented by his temporal loss, he kept his faith in God and nurtured it.

He soon heard of Sr. Mary of St. Peter's efforts to spread devotion to the Holy Face and, inspired by the Holy Ghost through her example, decided to dedicate his life to this work. He kept an oil lamp burning continuously before an image of the Holy Face, and his home became a center of pilgrimage when people began to gather to pray before the image, with many receiving miraculous cures through the application of his lamp's oil to their skin. He went on to establish the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face, and was later recognized by the Church as a "Venerable." He is now known familiarly as "The Holy Man of Tours."