(As we enter into these last days of Advent, and the ‘O Antiphons’, the Incarnation of the Son of God as the Messiah becomes the focus of our preparation. As a help in that, here is a reflection by contributor Carl Sundell on what may likely be the most significant relic of Christ, the Shroud of Turin. Although we will soon rejoice in His birth, we should recall that He came into this world to die for our sins, and so conquer death forever. On that all our hopes rest.) Editor
From the Gospel of John 20:1-10
On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned home.
The Holy Shroud of Turin has rather a checkered history. As the purported linen burial cloth that Jesus was wrapped in when laid in his tomb, it made its first historical appearance in 1354 at a church in Lirey, France. Before that, its history is difficult to document with certainty, though some speculation is that the Shroud was likely transferred from Jerusalem to Antioch, from there to Constantinople, and finally to Lirey. The transporting of the Shroud must have been kept extremely secret because the Roman Empire was to suffer many invasions over the centuries to come. Islam had conquered the city of Jerusalem in 637.
Why would the Shroud not be heard about before Lirey in 1354? It is reasonable to assume that the disciples of Jesus recognized immediately the precious value of the Shroud as a relic of the Lord’s death and resurrection. It is also reasonable to assume, given the early persecution of Christians by the Jews and the Romans, that there might be those who would seek to steal or destroy this relic. The future location and history of the linen cloth, then, was bound to be cloaked in mystery. Finally, after the Crusades ended in 1291 and the threat of Islam spreading through Europe had ended as well, the Shroud appeared in France, a thoroughly Catholic country. Its latest and safest location might have given those in charge of protecting the Shroud sufficient reason to end their secret mission and reveal the great mystery of the Shroud to the world. While all this is speculative, so would be any other way to explain the history of the Shroud before 1354.
But just a few years after 1354 the Shroud was declared a painted forgery by Pierre d’Arcis, Bishop of Troyes, in a letter to Pope Clement VII in 1389. It then was possessed by the Italian House of Savoy in 1453. Subsequently it was partly damaged in a fire and later moved to Turin, Italy where it has been kept to this day and is housed in the cathedral of St. John the Baptist. After the death of King Umburto II, possession of the Shroud passed from the House of Savoy to the Vatican in 1983.
In 1543 the Protestant reformer John Calvin, in a not-so veiled and probably envious attack on the Catholic possession of the Shroud, tried to disprove its authenticity as follows:
In all the places where they pretend to have the graveclothes, they show a large piece of linen by which the whole body, including the head, was covered, and, accordingly, the figure exhibited is that of an entire body. But the Evangelist John relates that Christ was buried, ‘as is the manner of the Jews to bury.’ What that manner was may be learned, not only from the Jews, by whom it is still observed, but also from their books, which explain what the ancient practice was. It was this: The body was wrapped up by itself as far as the shoulders, and then the head by itself was bound round with a napkin, tied by the four corners, into a knot. And this is expressed by the Evangelist, when he says that Peter saw the linen clothes in which the body had been wrapped lying in one place, and the napkin which had been wrapped about the head lying in another. The term napkin may mean either a handkerchief employed to wipe the face, or it may mean a shawl, but never means a large piece of linen in which the whole body may be wrapped. I have, however, used the term in the sense which they improperly give to it. On the whole, either the Evangelist John must have given a false account, or every one of them [those who pretend to own the burial clothes of Jesus] must be convicted of falsehood, thus making it manifest that they have too impudently imposed on the unlearned.
Yet throughout the centuries the Shroud had been venerated by many Catholics (and today by many Protestants) as a relic of our Lord’s death and resurrection. In 1978 the Vatican permitted small pieces of the Shroud to be removed for microscopic investigation by several scientists, resulting in the conclusion by one of them, Walter McCrone, that the supposed droplets of blood on the cloth were actually painted on. Other researchers did not agree (blood DNA on the cloth has revealed the presence of male XY chromosomes). Complicating matters, the radiocarbon dating in 1988 indicated the cloth was from the medieval period, roughly when it first appeared at Lirey. One pope, Clement VII, had condemned the Shroud as a forgery, and another, Julius II, had affirmed it as a true relic. The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor repudiated any findings concerning the authenticity of the Shroud.
In 1898 and 1931 photographic images of the body-imprint on the cloth were made, revealing a tall man with a beard, mustache, strong build, and with his hands covering his genitals. Marks on the cloth correspond to the wounds Jesus suffered on the cross. With some prescience, Pope Pius XII in the 1930s called the Shroud a “holy thing, perhaps like nothing else.” More recent developments have introduced some surprises to this now increasingly ancient controversy.
In 2024 new testing by an Italian team of scientists with a new x-ray technology (WAXS) overturned the erroneous 1988 scientific carbon dating of the linen cloth which had mistakenly calculated it as no more than seven hundred years old (which is said to have delighted many skeptical scientists at the time). It now appears that the cloth is from around the time of Christ. Also, the blood on the cloth is most definitely not paint, but real blood, pints of it.
The blood type on the Shroud is AB. St. John’s Gospel refers to finding in the tomb both the Shroud and another cloth, called a sudarium, that had covered the head of Jesus. The history of the Sudarium Christi, presently located in Oviedo, Spain, is one of being moved in 614 from a cave near Jerusalem to Alexandria and later to Spain. King Alfonso II in 840 built a chapel near Oviedo where it is still housed. The blood stains on the Sudarium Christi are type AB, the same as the Shroud of Turin!
Barrie Schwortz was the documenting photographer of the team that examined the Shroud in 1978. He has testified that the image is that of a real person who was crucified. When some years later he told his Jewish mother of his belief that the Shroud might really show an authentic image of Jesus, his mother replied that of course it was, why would the burial cloth of any ordinary crucified “criminal” be treasured and protected for two thousand years?
The blood on the Shroud, after 2,000 years, is still red, another fact that defies science. As blood normally shed from the body ages, it turns brown and then black. But the blood of Jesus on the Shroud stayed red because there is a scientific fact that in cases of extreme suffering (in this case torture) over a determined number of hours, the liver secretes bilirubin into the blood, so that when it is shed from the body, it stay red forever. We know from scripture that Jesus suffered extreme torture for quite a few hours. The image on the cloth shows scourge marks, over 120, from a Roman whip, not to mention all the bleeding from hands, feet, side, and crown of the head.
The image on the cloth appears to be three dimensional, rather than two dimensional such as would be found in a painting. This fact, according to nuclear engineer Robert Rucker, suggests a burst of radioactive energy inside the Shroud that left behind the image of Jesus fully imprinted on the cloth at the very moment of resurrection. Rucker has presented several YouTube talks concerning evidence for the radioactive burst, and he has a website, Shroud Research Network, that explores several issues related to the Shroud.
That the cloth is the actual Shroud of Jesus cannot be demonstrated to the satisfaction of confirmed skeptics, since the resurrection was a one-time event inside a darkened tomb without witnesses; but any other explanation for the revelation of the Shroud’s age and image would seem highly improbable. For the faithful, as several modern popes have affirmed, there may rightly be rational recourse to viewing the Shroud as a miraculous transfer of His image to be found, preserved, and venerated by hundred of generations yet unborn.
Lift All Hands with Endless Praise
An Easter Vigil Hymn
He walked upon the waters to the beat of drums above,
yet cold men in their frozen hearts denied his talk of love.
They lashed him in the heat of noon and struck his sacred face,
then nailed him to a wooden cross, intent on his disgrace.
“Father, forgive what they have done,” the broken Jesus cried.
“Into your hands my Spirit take,” and then … and then … he died.
The prophecy had ended now; no mocking Serpent stood
near mother Mary’s true son men had slain upon the wood.
As from the tomb’s black terror burst a mighty flash of light,
when from his grave the Sleeper rising ends eternal night.
Great heaven’s gate now opens wide; a thousand souls rush in.
The sleeping King has fully borne the weight of all our sin.
Old Eve and Adam stir to life, their ancient weeping shed,
as angels by the dozens come with garlands for Christ’s head.
Now let us thank the Father for the promise that he kept,
and lift all hands with endless praise for tears that Jesus wept.