Prayer to the Holy Face in Time of Trial

.. despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows" — which the Holy Face devotion has always read as a portrait of Christ in His Passion. Prayers in this form circulated in the Tours devotional literature of the later nineteenth century and were prized by souls carrying hidden suffering: illness, humiliation, family sorrow, or spiritual dryness. The consolation offered is not the removal of the trial but companionship in it, since the disfigured Face of Christ shows that God has already entered the place where the sufferer now stands. It is commonly prayed during illness, in seasons of depression or discouragement, on Fridays, and throughout Lent.