And now we come to the woman of Holy Week who did not exist: Veronica.
The Western Middle Ages was a stupendously splendid age in so many ways (Notre Dame! Oxford! Saint Louis! Aquinas! Francis!) that it is easy to forget that like all ages it had its mad quirks and pet evils.
The men and woman of this Age of Faith were too apt to want to collect any relic, any reminder of the Passion of Our Lord. Now this quirk, which at times became absurd, will compare favorably to the weirdness of our own era in many ways. I prefer the somewhat hopeless quest for the Holy Grail to the utterly hopeless, pointless, and endless quest to upgrade computer operating systems.
We cannot make a bad thing better, however, by pointing out that we are worse. It may not literally be true that there were enough pieces of the True Cross floating around in the Middle Ages to build Noah’s ark, but surely the sharp Greek businessman who sold Saint Louis the Crown of Thorns was guilty of something pretty bad.
Lying to piety from cupidity is wicked.
During this period, so full of desire to touch a piece of History, there arose the pious belief that a woman wiped the face of the suffering Jesus Christ with a napkin. This napkin was printed with the face of Jesus in a miracle and somehow ended up in Rome (!). The woman who did this charitable act came to be called Veronica.
A common mediation on her act runs this way:
Behold, the Lord of beauty. Saint Veronica, who loves Him much, runs to cleanse His face; to whom the church has given as a name her deed itself: veron ika, very image of the Lord, which legend says He left upon her cleansing cloth.
It is not true that there was a woman named Veronica who wiped the face of Jesus with a miraculous cloth to comfort him.
It is certainly true that there were woman who watched our Lord suffer, the noble women of Jerusalem, who wished they could. It is not impossible that one of them managed to comfort our Lord, however briefly.
Like Ben Huror The Robe (both pious fictions), it is natural to want to embroider the details of the Greatest Story ever told. It is not harmful if we know it to be a story.
When I was a little boy, the courage of Marcellus in The Robe made me cry (especially the book which is much better than the film) and I cheered for the bold Christianity of that son of Judah, Charlton Ben Hur.
These pious fictions (like parables) help us come slowly to the Greatest Story Ever Told which is so True and Powerful that it threatens our feeble grip on reality. Pious tales like Ben Hur or the legend of Veronica (as long as they are openly described as legends) help us come slowly to the story when we cannot handle any more. They can also remind us of truths we have forgotten or help us hear the old story in a a new way.
Folk legends like that of Veronica, like fairy tales, may over time get worked over by the folk to contain deep popular truths.
I am not, of course, justifying any initial lie. The late night Evangelist who hawks a healing cloth is bad, but the grandma who buys it may be healed. The act of the Evangelist has no good in it, but the faith of the woman much good indeed. It will not be the cloth, of course, but her faith and God’s good desire to make of something wicked the best thing that can be.
In the same way, a story that may have been invented to make money (come to the shrine with the face of Jesus!) came to contain a deeper truth under the pressure of folk wisdom. They told and retold the story they had heard and were confused about the name of the woman. Her cloth with the “very image of Christ” became her name: Veronica.
It was dangerous and very bad that simple folk confused Gospel history with legend. Thank God that even the Romans admit it to be a legend.
Now that we are in no danger of confusing the legend with Gospel history perhaps we can learn from it what our spiritual great-great-so-many-more-great-grandparents found true in it.
Veronica can stand for all those real women who would have comforted Jesus.
Her story, like the Cinderella, can function as a myth. I can learn from the story of the Cinderella without believing that she once lived in France. I can learn from this gentle story of a woman who loved Jesus without giving it the historicity I grant the gospels.
The Gospel is a myth that is True in every way, the story of Veronica is a myth that has an important truth.
What can we learn today from Veronica?
Every act of kindness done in His name leaves the image of Christ on the receiver.
Today if you hold your child in Christ’s name, then you are Veronica. When as a teacher help the child in government school for Christ’s sake, you are Veronica. A gift to a charity in the name of the Lord from a checking account already stressed, makes you Veronica.
All over the world the image of Jesus Christ appears in the beautiful and legendary acts of His Veronica’s.
The happy “confusion” of the Middle Ages was between the Image of Christ itself (veron ika) on her napkin and the woman’s name. It was a blessed and meaningful mistake (if it did not reflect a deeper folk wisdom) for the greatest imprint of the Face of the Master is not on the receiver of the good deed or on the tool used . . . it is in the transformation of the person who acts in love.
The sinner who is transformed by grace through a faith that acts begins to wear His Image. She becomes Good, because He is Good. She is made True, because He is True. She is truly Beautiful, because He is Beauty. She is the very image of Christ to a watching world.
