St. Therese of Lisieux's Prayer to the Holy Face

St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) took the Holy Face into the center of her spirituality, and at her religious profession in 1890 was given the full name Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. She composed this prayer in the Carmel of Lisieux, and it is preserved among her writings; it was during her final illness, when her own face was wasted by tuberculosis, that the devotion became most personal to her. The prayer asks for something bold and simple: that the soul be so conformed to Christ that the Father, looking at her, sees His Son. Her sister Celine, later Sister Genevieve, painted the Holy Face image venerated at Lisieux, and Therese's writings on the Holy Face did much to spread the Tours devotion in the twentieth century. It is fittingly prayed in illness, in hiddenness, and as a daily act of self-offering.