It is said that the Vanderbilt University student application form includes the question: “How do you view life: as a journey, a drama, a jungle?”
We don’t ask that question at SSC-R but it’s not farfetched that not a few students would admit that their life-vision has something from all three.
Last Saturday, students of RE 501 (Mary and the Church) got a big dose of the journey view, particularly that of the religious variety, the pilgrimage. Leaving punctually at 6 a.m. the four busloads of students and their teachers led by area chair Mr. Cecil Quitasol drove to the Antipolo Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage.
I am in a citing-mood, so let me cite once more from a quote book: “A fugitive is one who is running from home; a vagabond is one who has no home; a stranger is one away from home; and a pilgrim is on his way home”. The Christian lives this life on the way to the heavenly home in such a way that he could be admitted there, and in this he has invaluable help from Mary. Our students manifested this as they prayed the Marian devotion at the Antipolo shrine.
I have had my share of pilgrimages. As theological student in Navarra, Spain, I joined for three years the pilgrimage to the birthplace of Saint Francis Xavier, co-patron saint (with Saint Therese of the Child Jesus) of Catholic missions. The
javierada, as the pilgrimage is called, occurs on the first Sunday of March for the men and on the following Sunday for the women (though, of course, there was some mixing). We would start out from Marcilla (where our theology house was located) at 4 or 5 on Saturday morning and walk the sixty-plus kilometers to Sangüesa, arriving there in the evening. With blistered feet, cramped legs and body aching all over, we would try to get what sleep we could so as to be ready for the final leg the next day, the 8-kilometer Way of the Cross to the castle-residence of the Javier family. The
javierada culminated with the Eucharist at the esplanade of the castle. The journey back home was of course on wheels, and you can imagine that not a single soul would be awake. Arriving home, we would go straight to bed and wake up for classes the next day.
Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it – the RE 501 pilgrimage did not have much of those inconveniences. The hardships of the
javierada themselves pale in comparison to the perils and difficulties of pilgrimages of bygone ages, so it is the motivation that is the key.
From Antipolo, last Saturday’s RE 501 pilgrims visited the Carmel of Saint Therese on Gilmore Street in Quezon City. There, at 11:30, I celebrated the Eucharist with them.
The last activity of the pilgrimage was viewing the exhibit on the Shroud of Turin at the Mall of Asia. The IREP faculty, after learning of the Philippine exhibition of the Shroud and its endorsement by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education, had readily agreed that it was a not-to-miss element in this year’s pilgrimage. Through the exhibit, our student-pilgrims could, in the confident words of a press article, “journey with the Shroud’s history, discover the facts and myths behind the most studied archaeological artifact of all time, and unravel the mystery behind the Shroud”.
The 45-minute lights and sound show features exclusive video clips, special artifacts, and over 80 exhibit items from the collection of Mr. Barrie Schwortz, the Official Documenting Photographer commissioned by King Umberto II of Savoy, the Shroud’s previous monarch-owner (who later donated it to the Vatican). We were shown an introductory video that summarized what we were going to see. Then we were led through some stations of the way of the Cross, journeying with Christ from his trial to his death in Calvary and burial. The exhibit was not meant to be only scientific and informative; it was to inspire us on our pilgrim way.
Finally, we were ushered to the last part of the exhibit, which starts with a view of the 2005 replica of the Shroud of Turin. This part tackled the various methods used to prove or disprove the authenticity of the Shroud, based on art and architecture, science and technology, and the Bible. The various theories behind the Shroud are also discussed, such as the Leonardo da Vinci theory, the Photograph theory, the Middle East Pollen theory, the Hemoglobin discovery, the Templar theory, the Risen Christ theory and the Carbon Dating story.
I was sorry I did not bring my notebook, but I noted Mr. Schwortz’s web page (
www.shroud.com), which I later browsed for help for this blog and to which I refer the reader for more information.
The investigations on the Shroud can be grouped into three main areas: those on the cloth itself, those on the image imprint and those on the bloodstains.
The cloth itselfMany believe that the Shroud could not have been the burial cloth of Jesus after carbon 14 dating tests, conducted separately in 1988 by three laboratories (in Arizona, Oxford and Zurich) indicated that it should be dated to between 1260-1390 A. D. But in 2005 Raymond Rogers conclusively demonstrated that the samples used for the original radiocarbon tests were taken from a rewoven area of the Shroud, and therefore did not represent the original fabric.
The image imprintThe picture on the Shroud is actually a negative image; to see the positive image, one needs to invert it photographically. This was the amazing discovery in 1898 of Secondo Pia, the first to take photographs of the Shroud. And in 1978 – I remember that as first year theological students we excitedly commented this in class with our dogma professor – the image was discovered to have the third dimension: its darkness is proportionate to the distance between the cloth and the body part.
The image imprinted is that of a naked, tortured and crucified man; it is life-size and of absolutely accurate anatomical and physiological details. Writes Richard Sorensen
1 in one of the related links available on Schwortz’s web page : “The Shroud image is highly realistic and detailed, and depicts many bodily wounds that are completely consistent with Biblical accounts of the crucifixion, such as whipping, lacerations, contusions, scalp punctures, wound in the side, etc. Detailed examinations of the image by medical investigators have uniformly confirmed its accuracy”.
The image is not the result of pigment, stain, acid, dye or any applied material. The image itself is confined to the top-most fibrils of the cloth’s fibers. Whatever made the image did not penetrate the fibers of the cloth as all known artistic materials would. Continues Sorensen: “There are no pigments or brushstrokes… The image is without substance, and is made up of “lines” of darker coloration imprinted into the surface fibers of the cloth. These lines are approximately 1/100 the width of a human hair, making it impossible for the image to have been painted or manually created by an artist”.
Thus, the theory that Leonardo da Vinci painted it cannot not hold water. Besides, the first recorded exhibit of the Shroud was in the period 1355-57, and Leonardo was born in 1452.
The Blood StainsWrites Sorensen: “A number of researchers have demonstrated the presence of blood on the Shroud in various places, and some have done DNA testing, but the blood has proved to be too old and degraded to obtain any useful DNA test results. It has also been shown that there is no image in the areas where the blood exists; the blood was apparently deposited on the Shroud first, and acted to inhibit the image formation mechanism”.
“Of greatest interest and importance are the wounds. As with the general anatomy of the image, the wounds, blood flows, and the stains themselves appear to forensic pathologists flawless and unfakeable. The bloodstains are perfect, bordered pictures of blood clots, with a concentration of red cells around the edge of the clot and a tiny area of serum inside. … The body is peppered with marks of a severe flogging estimated at between 60 and 120 lashes of a whip with two or three studs at the thong end. …The wounds of the crucifixion itself are seen in the blood flows from the wrists and feet”.
One of the most interesting features of the Shroud is that the nail wounds are in the wrists, not in the palm. Medieval presentations of the Crucifixion show Jesus nailed through the palms. But nailing through the palms would not have supported his weight, and if the image were painted, the purported artist would have had knowledge of that fact, and gone against all artistic precedent.
At the start of his piece, Sorensen affirmed: “The evidence for the Shroud’s authenticity is so comprehensive and compelling that if it were an object with no religious overtones, there would be little serious doubt as to its veracity. But being the purported burial cloth of Jesus Christ and a possible witness to his resurrection, and hence to the alleged truth of Christianity, the Shroud raises powerful passions. Accepting or rejecting the authenticity of the Shroud is to many thus an issue of religious or anti-religious conviction. However, those who seriously seek to study the Shroud should approach it with an open mind and lay aside their religious persuasions as they examine the evidence, both pro and con”.
As to our student-pilgrims, we did not allow them to stay at the Mall after the pilgrimage. We hoped that they would see the denial as a wholesome discipline that would help them appreciate the whole point of the pilgrimage. And that they would view their life less a jungle.
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1 Summary of Challenges to the Authenticity of the Shroud of Turin at
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/sorensen2.pdf
