Image on the shroud: a reminder of His Resurrection

By Prof.Fr.Louis Marie Navaratne

Recent computer technology research on the Turin Shroud - the burial cloth of Jesus Christ - is revealing more scientific evidence of the Resurrection. Scientists have found there was a flash of light from within the body - an Auto-Radiation as powerful as the Hiroshima nuclear explosion. It left an imprint of Jesus' face and body on the cloth, though in negative form. Researchers and Christian scholars say the startling new evidence of the Resurrection is God's gift to the world to mark the 2,000th birthday of Jesus and His answer to all the doubting Thomases who want to see before they believe.

There is no other area in Shroud studies which has induced more debate as the question of "IMAGE-formation". As Marc Borkan writes in his article "Ecce Homo! - Science and the Authenticity of the Turin Shroud": "Perhaps the most important and obvious property of the Shroud image is its 'SNAPSHOT' nature.........." (Cf.Vertices- (The Duke University Magazine of Science, Technology and Medicine), Vol.10, No. 2, Winter 1995, p.43). The idea is simple but the implications are as profound and far reaching as to include the phenomenon of "light-or-heat" generated at the resurrection of the body which had been wrapped in the cloth (Cf.Verdict on the Shroud, pp.145-146). Of course, as has been repeated umpteen times, all modern scientific research on the Shroud-Image was occasioned by Secondo Pia's photograhic- discovery 100 years ago.. Shroud-studies owe a big debt of gratitude to both Pia and Eurie, because most of the ensuing theological and scientific discussions on the Shroud and its image have been based on these earliest photos, i.e. from the beginning of this century with Paul Vignon (biologist) and Yves Delage (scientist) up until research-work of Dr.Pierre Barbet (through 1940's and 50's) and even beyond. It's worth listening to Barbet, who did more than 20 years of medical scientific experiments on the Shroud-image, in order to get first-hand information of what the IMAGE is all about.

As a leading Surgeon of his day, Barbet, after all his minute investigations, makes bold as to declare that "from the point of view of anatomy and physiology, the authenticity of the Shroud (le linceul) is a scientific fact (une verite scientifique)" (Cf.La Passion de Jesus Christ - Selon Le Chringien, 12e Edition, Mediaspaul, Paris, 1993, p.28 - orginally published in 1950; the English version was first published in 1963 under the title: "A Doctor at Calvary").

Since we are concentrating on this particular subject, we could make a quick list of the many potential image-formation mechanisms that have been tried out to explain the Image on the Shroud. Along with the most primitive "painting" theories came the "printing", "dyeing"and "applying" of acids etc. Then came the so-called "hot statue" theories followed by the "direct contact", "vaporgraph", "chemical reaction", "diffusion", "scorch" and "latent image" theories.

Interestingly, recent research done by two American scientists has obtained more information regarding the three-dimensional character of the image. Alan and Mary Whanger, with a newly developed analytic-image-comparison technique called "Polarized image overlay" (PIO), have been able to demonstrate that the Shroud image contains a considerable amount of in-depth information of the body which had been encased in the cloth.

Whatever the research of the 70's and 80's came up with, scientific consensus of the 90's underline the most important and obvious property of the Shroud image to be its "SNAPSHOT" nature. It suggests a "flash of light" (possibly of an auto-X-ray, electronic, or even nuclear or an "as-yet-unknown" type), within the fraction of a second, emanated from the body that had been wrapped inside - which caused the "negative" picture of the dead-body. Science has been able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the image on the cloth is "not of a decaying body, but of a body in rigor mortis.... the man must have been dead a few hours before deposition in the cloth. But the consensus of researchers is that 'no signs of postmortem decomposition appear on the Shroud image". (Cf.Vertices, p43).

Pathologists have confirmed that the body inside the Shroud had been a "corpse", that it had not decomposed and that it had left the cloth without the cloth itself having been lifted off from the body (the blood-marks are all intact - as if still clinging to the wounds!) . Although they are still unable to explain how the body could have left the cloth, they are able to give a "rather precise time frame" for the disappearance of the body: "at roughly forty-eight to seventy-two hours after death." (Cf.Ibid.). Of course, we cannot and should not expect the scientists either to be able to go beyond a certain point of research regarding the Shroud of Turin nor to express their findings other than in a purely scientific language. It is up to us to see the affinity between what Science has discovered about the Shroud and what the Gospels and Christian Tradition have handed down to us. For one thing, Faith and Science seem to be joining hands, as they, together, search and research and strive the question: "Who do they say that the Man of the Shroud is?" or "Who do you say that He is?" (Compare with: Matthew 16,14,15,16) Whatever answer people choose to give to this question, there is no doubt that the Holy Shroud contains THE IMAGE FOR THE YEAR 2000.

In conclusion, we could ask: What dramatic and pictorial expression do we have of the sorrowful Passion of Jesus... and what better reminder of His glorious Resurrection than the IMAGE on the Shroud? When one is in the presence of this "relic of the paschal mystery of Christ" and gazing on the image, one is able to relive the contemplative, charismatic and mystical experience reported by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews: "But WE SEE JESUS, for a short while made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of men.... and again WE SEE JESUS, crowned with glory and honour because he submitted to death; by God's grace he had to experience death for all mankind." (Heb. 2:9). Was the "negative" image on the original Shroud a mere accident? Or was it thus planned... so that when human eyes (the natural cameras) look upon it, the "positive" image of our Lord and Saviour Jesus would be imprinted on their retinas and in their hearts? Or is it another form of the Lord's Apparitions to the world at large (especially in modern times)... inviting all the Thomases (including the atheist, rationalists and agnostics) who remonstrate: "Unless I see the holes that the nails made in His hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into His side, I refuse to believe". (John 20:25). May the IMAGE on the Holy Shroud continue to draw many more people to the contemplation of the HOLY FACE OF JESUS as we prepare for the great Jubilee Year 2000.

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