The Shroud of Turin and the Face of Jesus

When I saw this image of Christ the King, I fell in love with it. One of the main reasons is because it looks so much like the face of Jesus reconstructed from the Shroud of Turin. All of the hoopla from unbelievers trying to say the shroud was a medieval fake has fallen by the wayside. The carbon dating that supposedly proved it wasn't old enough to be authentic was taken from a sample corrupted by the fire of 1532. No one has ever been able to recreate an image like that of Christ on the shroud by artificial means. Certainly, the technology to try to fake it was not available to the ancients. 

Why I AM STILL and ALWAYS WILL BE a Catholic!

Is Blase Cupich Caiphas reincarnated?

Bad news just keeps piling up about the Judases in the hierarchy! Are you paying attention? Sometimes it feels like we're being buried in sewage!

Let's face it -- like McCarrick, everybody knew about Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's treachery. The stories about the rape and satanic ceremony involving "Agnes" has been around for decades. Who could miss his worldly relationships. (Really, what kind of priest has Ann Landers at his deathbed or asks for the gay men's chorus to sing at his wake?) Everybody knew that Bernarin's seamless garment ensured (and was designed) so that Teddy Kennedy and his Democrat cronies could finesse their child-killing advocacy with their phony social justice agenda. Nothing being exposed is new; it's simply being formally documented. As for Blase Cupich, Bernardin's cover-up artist, he is Caiphas reincarnated!

Never Lose Hope -- Behold the Holy Face of Jesus

I've spoken to many people lately who are so downhearted about the state of the world and Holy Mother Church that they are tempted to lose hope. God forbid!  I agree that poor Holy Mother Church is a battered bride. Many of the blasphemies uttered against her spout forth from the mouths of men wearing Roman collars, her spiritual spouses. Rather than discourage us, that fact should remind us that 1/12th of Jesus' apostles betrayed him without repentance and the other 11/12ths abandoned him in the crisis. Happily, eleven of the twelve returned to suffer and die in the faith, all but one a martyr.

How many anointed men are in the Church today? I don't know, but perhaps as many as 1/12th are Christ's unrepentant (at least at present) betrayers. Fr. Hardon once said that Jesus allowed Judas so the flock would not be surprised when Church leaders acted like Judas.

So, rather than being scandalized and losing hope when we see the state of the world and our religious leaders hob-nobbing with the enemy, we should remember Christ crucified, betrayed, and abandoned by his closest friends. Then we should run to the cross, embrace it, kiss the feet of Jesus and lift our heads to gaze up at his Holy Face.

It's Palm Sunday -- and so the Passion Begins!

What a picture we saw at Mass this morning. Before the processional the priest blessed the palms and read the gospel of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. How soon things changed. By the end of Mass we had walked the way of the cross. We saw Judas betray Jesus with a kiss and Peter with three denials punctuated by curses. We heard the crowds (ourselves taking their places) scream "Crucify him!" and watched Pontius Pilate try to wash innocent blood from his guilty hands. We walked along the via crucis adding our own sinful abuse of Christ to the weight of His cross. And we saw the Roman soldiers wield all the tools of torture from the multi-thonged scourge studded with bone, to the crown of thorns, to the nine-inch nails used to brutally attach the precious body to the wooden beams.

And how does Jesus respond through it all? Silence and prayer. "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."

There is an awful (and awe-full) passion meditation from Pierre Barbet's A Doctor at Calvary. Barbet was a surgeon who wrote the book in the 1950s after examining the Shroud of Turin. His analysis of Christ's suffering is told with a doctor's eye for detail and a sense of the physical pains that accompanied each stage from the sweat of blood on the Mount of Olives until Christ took his last agonized breath and whispered, "It is finished" on Calvary hill. My husband and I read the meditation every Good Friday to remind us once more of the terrible price Christ paid because of our sins.

Let me give you one paragraph to meditate on and urge you to buy the book. "The crucifixion begins. Oh, it is not very complicated; the executioners know their work. First of all He must be stripped. The lower garments are dealt with easily enough, but the coat has firmly stuck to His wounds, that is to say, to His whole body, and this stripping is a horrible business.Have you ever removed the first dressing which has been on a large bruised wound, and has dried on it? Or have you yourself ever been through this ordeal, which sometimes requires a general anaesthetic? If so, you know what it is like. Each thread has stuck to the raw surface, and when it is removed it tears away one of the innumberable nervous ends which have been laid bare by the wound. These thousands of painful shocks add up and multiply, each one increasing the sensitivity of the nervous system. Now it is not just a question of a local lesion, but of almost the whole surface of the body, and especially of that dreadful back. The executioners are in a hurry and set about their work roughly. Perhaps it is better thus, but how does this sharp, dreadful pain not bring on a fainting fit? How clear is is that from beginning to end He dominates, He directs His Passion."

May we all enter into this Holy Week of suffering and glory and exit it filled to the brim with increased faith, hope, and charity.

N.B. The picture above is the living face of Jesus reconstructed from the image of the dead face of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin. There are blessings attached to devotion to the Holy Face. Look into His eyes and know His love for you.