Today we celebrate Saint Veronica, a woman who was by the side of Jesus Christ on his most challenging moments.
Saint Veronica
According to Saint Nicodemus of Mount Athos (1749-1809), Veronica came from the city of Paneada, better known as Caesarea of Philip, the ruins of which are today in the Golan Heights.
After the Lord healed her of a torturous hemorrhage, she made His statue for the faithful to honor and worship. At its base grew an herb that cured various diseases.
She was the One who:
St. Veronica, (flourished 1st century CE, Jerusalem;), renowned legendary woman who, moved by the sight of Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha, gave him her kerchief to wipe his brow, after which he handed it back imprinted with the image of his face. In Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and certain other Christian traditions, she is honored at the sixth station in the meditative Stations of the Cross.
Her imprinted kerchief is commonly known as the Veil of Veronica, or simply Veronica, and there are several existing images that are each purported to be the original relic or an early copy of it.
Legend or Reality?
The account of St. Veronica is thought to be a legend originally derived from Historia ecclesiastica (written 312–324; Ecclesiastical History) by Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius tells us that at Caesarea Philippi there lived the woman whom Christ healed of a hemorrhage (Matthew 9:20). In the apocryphal Acts of Pilate (4th/5th century), this woman is identified with the name Veronica. Later tradition held that Christ gave the healed Veronica a miraculous cloth, which was allegedly used to cure the emperor Tiberius of leprosy, and the cloth was eventually understood as being the Veil of Veronica.
In France, Veronica was reportedly married to the convert Zaccheus the tax collector (Luke 19:1–10). In the Bordeaux district, she supposedly brought relics of the Blessed Virgin to Soulac-sur-Mer, where she died and was buried. By some accounts, the name Veronica is itself a fanciful derivation from the words vera icon (Latin icon from Greek eikōn), meaning “true image,” and was originally used for the kerchief and later applied to the legendary woman.
Reference: Encyclopedia Britannica