Yannick Clément sent this to me and I meant to post it yesterday. Thing just got very busy this Easter weekend and I didn’t get around to it until this morning. Enjoy, this is something to think about:
Mainly because many of the readers and writers of this blog seem to always seek some kind of proof of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the Shroud of Turin, I thought it would be a very good idea to share with all of you a great meditation for Easter that was written recently by a Priest from my province of Quebec named Jean-Yves Garneau. Right off the bat, I must say that I fully agree with everything contained in this short meditation. Note that even if I tried to translate it the best I could, it is possible that there are still some minor errors in the text.
Here it is:
STONE REMOVED, CHRIST ALIVE
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. (ref. : 1 Corinthian 15,17). If he is resurrected, everything changes. Already, we can live of his life, and we can hope to resurrect one day.
Sometimes, we would love that someone proves us that Jesus is really resurrected. One single proof would be enough. Even a little one. BUT THIS PROOF WON’T BE GIVEN TO US. God DON’T WANT and SHOULD NOT give it to us. Simply because the Resurrection of Jesus is a FACT TO BELIEVE, NOT TO DEMONSTRATE. It was true for the first disciples. It is true for us. And it will be that way till the end of times.
THERE IS NO PROOFS THAT EXIST that could render obvious the Resurrection of Jesus, BUT THERE ARE SIGNS that invite us to believe it. The Gospels reports many of these, which were given to the first disciples. The one we found in today’s evangelical reading challenges us.
Mary Magdalen comes to the tomb in which the body of Jesus had been placed. Coming closer to it, she ask herself how the heavy stone that block the entrance could be removed. What was her surprise! The stone had been rolled. When? By whom? What happened?
It is a SIGN OF GOD. At that moment, she didn’t understand it. A bit later, she will understand all the sense: Jesus is again and forever alive!
Jean-Yves Garneau, Priest, Quebec.
I hope you liked this short meditation! Personally, I think we can consider the “empty Shroud of Turin” exactly in the same manner than the rolled stone and the empty tomb discovered by Mary Magdalen on Easter morning, i.e. as a great SIGN of the Resurrection of Christ, but never as some kind of physical proof of that singular event in the history of mankind. Why? Simply because Jesus love us so much that he will never force anyone of his children to believe in him! He respect way too much our liberty (which is one of the greatest gift he ever give us) to left some kind of noticeable and unquestionable proof of his Resurrection on his burial cloth! It would be great if people like Giulio Fanti or John Jackson could understand that important truth regarding God and us. The only things given by him to fortify our faith in his Resurrection (and, at the same time, in our own resurrection and salvation) are SIGNS. And some of these signs can be seen on the Shroud for someone who knows how to look at this piece of cloth with the eyes of FAITH. The most obvious of these signs being the simple fact that such a gruesome and bloodstained burial cloth (which would automatically gives a legal impurity for any Jew who would touch it) had been removed from the tomb, kept and conserved with great care until this day. Also, along with the Shroud, it’s important to note that there are many others signs of the Resurrection of Christ out there, including the numerous miracles recognized by the Church, the apparitions of Mary recognized by the Church, the life of many Saints, etc.
Since the Resurrection of Christ is the greatest sign that we will all resurrect some day to enter into God’s Kingdom, I think we have the right, as believers, to celebrate on this day! And not only for those who believe in Christ but for all mankind, because we’re all God’s children and, for the Father, every one is precious, no one is disposable! Isn’t the profound meaning of the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ? Because it’s true, let me conclude by saying Happy Easter to everyone, including those who understand the Shroud differently than I, like Daveb, Ron, Giulio Fanti, Paolo DiLazzaro, Ian Wilson and, of course, Colin Berry (who is the last but not least)! One day in God’s Kingdom, we’ll all know the complete truth regarding this cloth and I seriously doubt that, at that moment, we will still consider it as something of great importance! On the contrary, when this day will come, I believe the man of the Shroud will be much more important for any of us, while his burial cloth will become obsolete! Finally, note that such a shift is truly possible while we’re still here on Earth waiting patiently to enter into God’s Kingdom!!! Personally, that’s what I try to do more and more everyday.
P.S.: In a one section of an issue of Shroud Spectrum International that has recently been published on Shroud.com, we found a little summary of a lecture that was given by the Jesuit Priest, Rev. Pierre Mourlon-Beernaert in Belgium. Here’s what Father Mourlon-Beernaert had to say about the Shroud: “For our faith, the Shroud CANNOT BE CONSIDERED AS A PROOF, but rather AS A SIGN (AND WHAT A SIGN!) for out time.” I thought it was a good idea to quote this because that fits perfectly well with the meditation of Jean-Yves Garneau, as well as mine.
Superb reflection! For me the Shroud proves nothing, yet suggests everything — as all true signs do.
Bonjour David (I guess, with your name that you understand French) !!!
Je te félicite pour ta bonne compréhension du Linceul et de ce qu’il représente. Malheureusement, chez bon nombre de croyants modernes très religieux, on dénote une toute autre manière de voir ce linge et son image. En fait, ils ne cherchent que des preuves scientifiques de la résurrection et c’est une honte car Jésus lui-même a vraiment fait l’éloge de la foi sans preuve !!! Donc, bravo encore pour ta manière de voir les choses et je te souhaite vraiment de rester ouvert aux nombreux signes de la résurrection et de la vie éternelle que nous envoi l’Esprit Saint, pour peu que nous ayons les yeux de la foi pour les voir !!!
In this same part of the Shroud Spectrum International issue that I refer to in my comment of Father Garneau’s meditation (link: http://shroud.com/pdfs/ssi02part9.pdf), there is a summary of an Italian congress about the Shroud that was held in Bologna, Italy in 1982. In it, there’s a very interesting note concerning a presentation done by Professor Giovanni Imbalzano in which he called attention to the 3-D effect of CHEMICAL-THERMOGRAPHIC IMPRINTS, which could offer precious information about the Shroud image. If Dan could find the text of this presentation (it is possible that a review of it can be found in Sindon #30), I think it would be interesting to publish it on the blog. We constantly hear this false statement in the pro-Shroud world: “The 3-D nature of the Shroud image is totally unique.” A long time ago, I point out that such a statement is completely wrong and, as a proof, I pointed out the experiment done with the VP-8 image analyzer done by John De Salvo in the 1980s with imprints of plants on paper that truly gave the same kind of 3-D results than the Shroud image with the VP-8 and, from this note concerning Prof. Imbalzano’s presentation in Bologna, it seems that other examples of natural imprints that contained 3-D information exists…
All this is truly a bad thing for all those who defend the idea that the Shroud image can only be linked with the Resurrection of Christ and can, therefore, represent a physical proof of that supernatural event, because these people often used the wrong idea that there is no image in the world that was naturally formed and which contain 3-D information, in order to back-up their religiously biased ideology. Because we now know for sure that this is a wrong argument, here’s what I have to say to those people: if other natural imprints can present the same kind of 3-D information than what we found in the Shroud image, then why this body imprint could not have been caused by a natural interaction between a crucified body and the surface of the cloth, as defended over the years by, among others, Vignon, Barbet, Legrand, Father Rinaldi, Baima Bollone, Pellicori, De Salvo, Mills, Rogers and recently by two Italian scientists named Fazio and Mandaglio (who conclude that the Shroud image is most probably the product of a low-temperature chemical process like Maillard reactions and/or thermal radiation released after death by a corpse)? Using Occam’s razor, wouldn’t it be the most simple and rational explanation for the image on the Shroud? After all, this image is really showing a dead body in rigor mortis and not a glorious body…
So Dan (or anyone else who will read this), if you can find a numeric copy of the presentation done in 1982 by Prof. Imbalzano (in English of course!), that would be great to share it with us on this blog! In fact, that would change from all the supernatural craziness that has completely polluted the pro-Shroud world in recent years and, therefore, gives a bit of fresh air to this parallel world that desperately need it. And here’s another interesting note to conclude: In one of their recent paper about the Shroud, Fazio and Mandaglio have destroyed the wrong argument often used by those who think the Shroud image have been caused by the Resurrection of Christ, i.e. that the non-homogeneous distribution of colored fibers in the image area (where we can often see a non-colored fiber being immediately adjacent to a colored fiber) cannot, in any way, be due to a natural phenomenon. Effectively, not only we now know that the Shroud image is not the only imprint in the world that possess 3-D information, we also know (thanks to Fazio and Mandaglio, among others) that a very mild phenomenon like a low-temperature chemical process and/or thermal radiation released after death by a corpse can cause an uneven (also called non-homogeneous or stochastic) distribution of colored fibers in one single thread of a linen cloth. When we take seriously into account all these FACTS, we are forced to conclude that a possible complex and mild natural process (still undetermined yet) must rank very high among the most probable explanations regarding the presence of a body image on the Shroud. And if this hypothesis is correct, such a natural process could not have come from anything else than the very close proximity of a dead and tortured corpse with an ancient linen shroud for less than 72 hours (i.e. before the release of the first liquids of putrefaction by the corpse).
Archeologist Shimon Gibson with his colleagues found the tomb discovery in Jerusalem 2009. The discovery exposed remains of the man who had suffered leprosy and died tuberculosis. The researches records that deceased have lived in 1-50 A.D. (in the time of Jesus) and the tomb was obviously the family tomb of upper class or priest family.
Gibson said that the man had been buried according to manners of the Jews at that time. The manner was that the body wrapped to linen clothes, and the head wrapped with separate face linen. Gibson said that if the person wasn’t actually dead and woke up, he could shake and blow off the face linen and shout for help.
Professor Shimon Gibson said that the shroud of Turin doesn’t fit together for burial practices in first century Palestine. Gibson said that the shroud of Turin is a single sheet made with a twill weave. According to Gibson the twill weave was known only from the medieval period.
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