Today’s Gospel is John 9:1-41 – Revised Common Lectionary. The miracle of Jesus healing the blind man can be taken as just that: Jesus placing his hands on a blind man’s eyes and behold, he can see. It can also be looked at as an allegory. We are all sometimes blind to things that are right in front of us; each of us from time-to-time walks around in the darkness searching for the light.
I was thinking about how the allegorical aspect of this might apply to the Shroud of Turin when I noticed an email from a reader of this blog who, wisely, prefers to remain anonymous. The subject, all in caps, was, “CAN’T YOU SEE?” The message body:
Why can’t you see that a faker of relics while on holiday in Macedonia or Hungary noticed an Epitáphios with an embroidered herringbone pattern or a drawing of a burial cloth with just such a weave? He would thus know he must procure a length of cloth with the same pattern for his creation; not, mind you, because he lived in a well-informed age, but because he had to fool anyone else who might have holidayed in the greater Balkans? Or was it the other way around with a maker of Epitáphios from Macedonia holidaying in Lirey, France?
I know he must be kidding. You CAN SEE that, can’t you? Holidayed and holidaying? He must be a Brit.