Morning Veil
On praying for a sleeping child.
❤️.. I initially wrote this on Water to Wine, but I’ve come to know this entry belongs here. I’m come to that anything in my life related to Our Sorrowful Mother is intimately connected to our Holy Face of God devotion. There’s more to say, but not now.. Soon.
In nómine Patris, ✠ et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti. Amén.
My daughters veiled when they were young. Teenage veiling was iffy when went to our local, non-veiling parish, but when we began visiting our diocese’s TLM, veils were solidly reintroduced into the family home. We have been wearing them ever since.
One day, my eldest bought her own. She was working at the Catholic Bookstore at the time and paid $70 for it online before Etsy Veil shops were a thing. She wore it to Mass — our local parish before we made the official, solid leap into Latin-forever territory.
It was a long, black veil. And I nodded approvingly.
I look back on this, knowingly, with the little wisdom I still have now, that black veils are for married women.. or women in mourning.
I say this because the church fashion I’ve seen recently is for married women to wear white veils, even though they are matrons — even though black for a married woman represents the austere Office of a Matriarch, just as the black fabric of a priest’s cassock represents the austere Office of His Priesthood.
Don’t ask me to quote, it’s just common sense, an old traditional thing I’ve long known in my bones.
I’ve noticed how colored veils, it seems, have now given way to white veils for some married women. When a young man looks at the white veiled feminine figure in Mass, he’s not sure whether she’s a young maiden, a mom, or married. That’s my educated guess in my little wisdom.
My daughter didn’t wear her black veil for every long, because somehow, she developed the holy sense she needed to wear a white veil — to look forward to her upcoming marriage, whoever God intended her spouse to be, be it Our Lord and Good Saviour Jesus Christ Himself or a faithful Catholic man. So, the black veil got rolled up and placed in a drawer for safekeeping.
One day, she ran away and eloped to a communist atheist she met online.
.. and that black veil became mine.
For a very long time, I never quite knew how to wear it.
It is very black and very long, like a smallish, rectangular tablecloth. One Mass I would wear it covering my head and neck, hanging over my chest, another Mass, it chose to be a shawl, barely covering my crown.
Our life was full of confusion then. What to say, how to say it, who to pray to, when to pray and for how long, when to surrender, when to petition, when to novena, cry, beg, plead, silently rage, despair, confess, and get up again.. all a clouded memory.
Everything changed when we began going to daily Holy Adoration when Christ’s stillness began to settle over the noisy prayer life.
Over and over, we would kneel before our Saviour, over and over, we would see Him at the mercy of a brass box and glass panel and anyone’s hands deemed worthy to touch Him, over and over, our reluctance, fear, and hesitation were chipped at until we accepted this cross.
Literally — one moment, we were kneeling before Him, loving and adoring Him, the next our cross was lifted and placed across our left shoulder as we raised and crossed ourselves as we said goodbye.
You know Who did this for us, Who gave us strength to carry it.
The veil now drapes itself more easily these recent weeks. It did it on its own. I noticed it one pre-dawn morning as we walked toward the chapel in the darkness. The wind was blowing and I was thinking of nothing in particular in anticipation of meeting Our Lord, when I noticed the stiff breeze and wondered if it would fall away.
She sat squarely on my head and shoulders, laying flat upon my collarbones. Only her ends fluttered, wishing to hasten us to Jesus.
At that moment, I knew she’d been sitting like that for awhile, solid and stoic, knowing where she belonged, how she should be worn, as if she’d been doing it this whole time.
I didn’t have to pinch her, redirect her, reposition or reorient her.. no pins. She did it all on her own, finally finding the suitable angle of the head she’d been placed upon.
I do see I am in mourning.
I do see my head, steeped now, in a natural bent as I approach Jesus, His Tabernacle, His Altar.
I do see I no longer mourn just for my daughter, but for the countless Catholic children who have fallen away, for the many parents who are forgotten, and for the many, many more souls whom no one prays for on this side of Eternity.
Most importantly, I see Our Sorrowful Mother and the work of salvation she continues on behalf of her Son.
I may never see the reversion of my daughter while I am alive. And in this, I ask God to take my life all the sooner if it means she will come back now, all the more knowledgable, powerful, and experienced to win souls for God. He hasn’t answered yet, and I’m still around. It’s only been 2, (3, 4) years since this all started. I also have a dear husband and other children who need me in their lives. I know I’m not in change of any of this, I’m just a person.
I know I am only one, and nothing, but someone who sees and wishes to launch these perceptions like little golden arrows into the Sacred Heart of Jesus where True Merit lives, uniting my prayers to Jesus on His Cross at Calvary — bc He can do more than measly me with my mourning veil atop the little altar of my sad heart.
Imagine if we all did this. Taking this pain in this exile and uniting it to Jesus’ suffering for the salvation of souls, for the salvation of the world.
.. turning darkness into light.. night into dawn.. a restless, sleeping death into everlasting life.
What Hope we’d have.. driven by Faith.. to return firey love for Divine Love already been cast upon the earth.1
In nómine Patris, ✠ et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti. Amén.
❤️ in Love, your veronica St. Albert the Great, pray for us, 11.15.2025 moved to The Holy Face of God Substack on 11.16.2025, St. Gertrude pray for us.
Pray for reparation, and the reversion of your daughter. i do it for my family with the followong prayer: "In order to appease Thy Divine Justice, we offer Thee, O Lord, the merits acquired by Mary, Thy Mother and ours, when she stood at the foot of the Cross. If Thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities, Lord, who shall abide it?"