Tag: Relics

4 min read

Saints

Why Do Catholics Venerate Relics?

Michael R. Heinlein

September 8, 2023 7:24 am September 8, 2023

4 min read

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4 min read

Although more than a common part of Catholic culture and practice, the veneration of relics has been practiced less during the last 50 years or so. But that seems to…

Although more than a common part of Catholic culture and practice, the veneration of relics has been practiced less during the last 50 years or so. But that seems to be changing in recent years, as a number of saintly relics have been traversing the United States, attracting large numbers of the faithful. Relics seem to be making a comeback, and in a big way.

And yet the veneration of relics in the Catholic tradition can be misunderstood easily. At first glance it can appear to be displaced praise. Critics would falsely claim that praise or worship is accorded to the relic or saint rather than God himself, who, of course, is rightly the only subject of all worship.

A proper understanding of relic veneration, however, is best achieved with an appropriate approach. It would simply be incoherent to think that a Catholic or Christian would offer praise and worship to anyone other than God. And yet, honoring the saints — and their relics — is also an important part of what we do.

In order to develop a proper understanding of the place of relics in the Christian tradition, it might be helpful to consider them within a different context — that of family. It’s not uncommon for many people to honor the memory of their loved ones by keeping pictures of family around the house. Nor is it uncommon to keep cherished belongings of our deceased loved ones, like grandma’s jewelry or grandpa’s Bible. These belongings likely are treasured, and treated with honor and reverence. They’re kept in safe and honorable places. They’re well-packaged when we move. They’re often handed on from one generation to the next. These secular “relics” assist us in recalling the person and his or her life, and the memories that remind us of who they were and what they were about.

It is not rare to honor remnants of relatives’ bodies, or those of notable people. Often parents will keep first teeth that are lost or save clippings of their child’s first haircut. We build monuments to great men and women, and set up grave markers to memorialize them. And so it seems almost second nature for us to honor members of our family and those dear to us as well as the objects that belonged to them.

And so why wouldn’t a similar reverence translate into our family of the Church? The saints are those men and women from our family who are deserving of our honor for their life of spiritual greatness. Moreover, they have put on Christ in baptism and beocme members of his body.

Catholics see the members of the Church as members of a family. Of course, as human beings — composites of body and soul — the Church honors their bodies after death. We, of course, do this as well in our families when we visit and decorate graves on birthdays, death dates or holidays. Made in God’s image and likeness, we recognize the dignity of the human person by honoring their earthly remains — that is why the Church demands of proper disposal of a person’s remains (burial of body or cremains).

Within this context, then, we should understand that relics are meant to be honored and venerated, not worshipped. In fact, the saints lead us to fuller worship of God in spirit and truth. By honoring their memories, bodies and belongings, we give thanks to God for the saint’s holy witness. Relics are physical, tangible, concrete reminders that heaven is obtainable for us — so long as we recognize what made the saints holy and work to apply those qualities to our lives. When venerating relics we express gratitude to God for those members of our spiritual family. In the presence of the relics we recall their holy lives and we pray for the grace to achieve what they’ve achieved — eternity with God in Heaven.

Michael R. Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic. Follow him on Twitter @HeinleinMichael.

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12 min read

Relics

Shroud of Turin: Evidence of Jesus’ Resurrection?

Father Robert Spitzer

February 6, 2023 7:00 am February 6, 2023

12 min read

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12 min read

The Shroud of Turin is a burial shroud (a linen cloth woven in a 3-over-1 [3:1] herringbone pattern) measuring 14 feet 3 inches in length by 3 feet 7 inches…

The Shroud of Turin is a burial shroud (a linen cloth woven in a 3-over-1 [3:1] herringbone pattern) measuring 14 feet 3 inches in length by 3 feet 7 inches in width. It apparently covered a man who suffered the wounds of crucifixion in a way very similar to that recorded for Jesus of Nazareth.

The cloth has a certifiable history from 1349, when it surfaced in Lirey, France, in the hands of a French nobleman — Geoffrey de Charny. It also has a somewhat sketchy traceable history from Jerusalem to Lirey — through Edessa, Turkey and Constantinople. This history is confirmed by the pollen grains found by Max Frei, the coincidences between the Shroud and the Sudarium (facecloth) of Oviedo, and the coincidences between the Shroud’s seven unique facial features and those attributed to the Mandylion — the Holy Image of Edessa.

The Shroud has undergone considerably more scientific testing than any other relic in human history. The 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) investigation and subsequent investigations were remarkably thorough, and with the exception of the questionable 1988 carbon dating, all the evidence points to it being the burial cloth of Jesus, including the following:

I. Four contemporary dating tests: The vanillin dating test of Dr. Raymond Rogers, the two spectroscopic analyses (of professor Giulio Fanti, et al.), and the compressibility and breaking strength tests (of Fanti, et al.) date the Shroud to a time commensurate with the life and crucifixion of Jesus.

II. Three kinds of extrinsic dating evidence: (A) Testing of pollen samples by Dr. Max Frei who collected dust samples from the Shroud during the 1978 STURP investigation and later classified 58 pollen grains by comparing them to pollen grains in the largest botanical museums around the world. His conclusion was that the majority (45) were from the region of Israel (specifically from sedimentary layers from 2,000 years ago near the area of the Sea of Galilee), with six grains from the eastern Middle East (two grains from Edessa, Turkey, and one growing exclusively in Istanbul/Constantinople). The remaining grains came from France and Italy. Importantly, 13 of the pollen grains are unique to Israel and are found at the bottom of both the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. (B) Roman coins on the eyes of the image on the Shroud, which give evidence that it’s highly probable that the image of the man on the Shroud of Turin has two Jewish lepta, minted in A.D. 29 by Pontius Pilate in Judea at the time of Jesus, on his eyelids. (C) One-hundred twenty coincidences of blood and fluid stains between the Shroud and the Sudarium of Oviedo give evidence of a date and location of the Shroud’s origin similar to that of Jesus.

III. The blood stains on the Shroud: The blood stains tell a story very similar to the highly unusual crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth — they were imprinted on the Shroud before the image was made (the opposite of what would need to be done by a forger). The Shroud has deposits of real human blood, according to the experts who studied the blood flecks gathered on the STURP tapes in 1978. They determined that the blood on the Shroud is real. Some researchers have found that male DNA and an AB blood type are also present on the cloth. Though genetic testing confirms these findings, there is no guarantee that they belong to the man on the Shroud.

IV. Formation of the image on the Shroud: The image was not formed by dyes, chemicals, vapors or scorching. The only known explanation for the formation of the image is an intense burst of vacuum ultraviolet radiation (equivalent to the output of 14,000 excimer lasers) emitted from every three-dimensional point of the body in the Shroud.

The combination of the above evidence is exceedingly difficult to explain in any way other than the burial cloth is that of Jesus of Nazareth. Moreover, the formation of the image by an intense outburst of vacuum ultraviolet radiation is suggestive of a resurrection event similar to that described in the Gospels. The above scientific evidence requires that a new carbon-dating test be done which observes the standard protocols for sampling. When these protocols are observed, it would be surprising if the result was not similar to the results of the four new dating methods mentioned above — approximately A.D. 50. If this result is obtained, it would indicate that the Shroud of Turin is very likely the burial shroud of Jesus Christ with evidence suggestive of His resurrection in light.

Evidence?

While we currently do not have a definitive explanation for how this unique and mysterious image was created from the body of a deceased man, the most plausible current hypothesis comes from a combination of two teams of researchers.

Dr. John Jackson’s team studied the Shroud and proposed the vacuum ultraviolet radiation hypothesis in 2008.

According to Jackson, an intense burst of vacuum ultraviolet radiation produced a discoloration on the uppermost surface of the Shroud’s fibrils (without scorching it), which gave rise to a perfect three-dimensional negative image of both the frontal and dorsal parts of the body wrapped in it.

Currently, we know of no natural explanation for the seemingly unique occurrence of such a burst of vacuum ultraviolet radiation from either a decomposing body or the geological/atmospheric conditions within a tomb. Though this is suggestive of a possible supernatural origin of the radiation — perhaps as a part of Jesus’ resurrection — we cannot prove this scientifically, because we cannot construct a scientific test for a supernatural cause — all we can do is eliminate every known natural cause of this seemingly unique radiation. The uniqueness and current inexplicability of this phenomenon gives us reason to believe that God has given us evidence of Jesus’ resurrection. This belief can be strengthened by further understanding of the light phenomenon that seems to be the source of the image as well as the continued elimination of natural causes for it. The most convincing seems to be the hypothesis of Jackson.

Research

The research of the 1978 STURP investigation, as well as subsequent research of Jackson, Fanti, Paolo Di Lazzaro and their teams, shows the likelihood that sometime after the blood deposits had dried on the Shroud the decomposing body in the Shroud emitted a short intense burst of vacuum ultraviolet radiation that led to a dehydration and discoloration of the frontal and dorsal parts of the Shroud, giving rise to a perfect photographic negative image. Jackson’s research also suggests that the body inside the Shroud became mechanically transparent and emitted light evenly from every three-dimensional point within it. This allowed the frontal part of the Shroud to collapse — creating an image (of both the inside and outside of the hands) as well as a double image on the frontal part of the Shroud.

Currently, the known laws of physics cannot explain how a decomposing body can emit an intense burst of vacuum ultraviolet radiation. Furthermore, they cannot explain how such a body could become mechanically transparent and emit light from every three-dimensional point within it.

So, where does that leave us? If Jackson’s explanation continues to be the only one to explain away the enigmas, and if future articulations of the laws of physics cannot explain how a decomposing body could become mechanically transparent and evenly emit vacuum ultraviolet radiation from every three-dimensional point within it, then we are left at the brink of a trans-physical or metaphysical explanation. Under these conditions, it would be both reasonable and responsible to believe that a trans-physical cause interacted with the decomposing body to transform it into an intense burst of light.

Evidently, we cannot scientifically prove a trans-physical cause, because science is restricted to the domain of physical causation. However, if the above conditions hold, we can reasonably infer the possibility and perhaps the likelihood of such a trans-physical cause. This is sufficient for reasonable and responsible belief.

Does this trans-physical explanation of the Shroud’s image point to the resurrection of Jesus? Jesus’ resurrection was not a resuscitation of a material corpse but rather a transforming event which gave rise to what St. Paul called a “spiritual body” — a body transformed in glory, spirit and power. Could this transformation of a material body into a burst of intense light signify a beginning point of the transformation of Jesus’ body from a physical one to a spiritual-glorified one? Though there can be no scientific proof of this, it is a reasonable inference from the parallels between the explanation of the Shroud’s enigmatic image and the testimony of St. Paul and the Gospel writers. In this sense, we might say that the image on the Shroud presents a clue — even a relic — of Jesus’ resurrection.

Conclusion

Why would we think the body in the Shroud was that of Jesus? As explained above, it is exceedingly improbable that the Shroud is a medieval forgery. First, there are no paints, dyes or other pigments on the Shroud (except for the small flecks coming from the sanctification of icons and paintings which touched it).

Second, the anatomical precision of the blood stains — which are real human blood that congealed on the Shroud before the formation of the image — are in precise anatomical correlation to the image itself. How could a medieval forger have accomplished this?

Third, it is exceedingly difficult to explain how pollen grains indigenous to Palestine appeared in abundance on a shroud of probable Semitic origin (if it originated in medieval Europe) and how coins minted in A.D. 29 in Palestine appeared on the eyes of the man on the Shroud. How could a medieval forger have duplicated these first-century Palestinian characteristics of the Shroud?

Fourth, the five enigmas of the image on the Shroud almost certainly preclude a forgery. How could a medieval forger have used vacuum ultraviolet radiation to discolor the cloth on the uppermost surface of the fibrils? How could he have created a perfect photographic negative image? How could he have created a double image on the frontal part of the Shroud? And how could he have known how to duplicate the interior and exterior of the hands in perfect proportion to each other? Thus it does not seem reasonable or responsible to believe that the Shroud is a medieval forgery.

Three Last Points

Beyond this, there are three probative kinds of evidence pointing specifically to Jesus’place and time of origin and to His unique crucifixion and resurrection:

The material of the Shroud, the pollen grains on it and the coins on the man’s eyes all have their origin in first-century Palestine — the place where Jesus was purported to have died.

The blood stains come from a crucifixion event identical to the one described in the four Gospels — which was very unusual, if not unique, in many respects — such as being crowned with thorns, being flogged and being pierced with a Roman pilum (spear).

The five enigmas of the Shroud’s image point to a trans-physically caused burst of vacuum ultraviolet radiation from a mechanically transparent body. This is suggestive of the transformation of Jesus’ body from a physical one to a spiritual-glorified one (as reported by St. Paul and the four Gospels).

The spiritual-glorified transformation of Jesus’ body was unique to the Christian view of resurrection. It was not known in Judaism (which held to a resuscitation of the flesh) or pagan cults (which held to ethereal or ghostlike views of immortality). Thus the enigmas on the Shroud’s image point to the uniquely Christian view of resurrection implied by Jesus’ risen appearance.

The odds of this first-century Palestinian burial shroud — with the unique features of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection — being that of anyone else is exceedingly remote. Inasmuch as the image is not a forgery, and that it originated from a real person living at the time of Jesus, crucified in the unique way of Jesus, and producing a burst of intense vacuum ultraviolet radiation from his decomposing body, who else would it be? Given all this, we might reasonably infer that the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus, which contains not only a relic of His crucifixion but also His resurrection in glory. If so, it shows both the truth of the most significant event in human history as well as the accuracy of the Gospel accounts of it.

Father Robert J. Spitzer, Ph.D., is a Jesuit priest currently serving as president of the Magis Center in Garden Grove, California. A prolific author, he also appears weekly on EWTN’s “Father Spitzer’s Universe.”

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8 min read

Relics

Face Cloth of Jesus’ Burial: The Sudarium of Oviedo

Janice Bennett

April 1, 2021 7:00 am April 1, 2021

8 min read

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8 min read

For more than a thousand years, Christian pilgrims have traveled to Oviedo, Spain. At the cathedral there, they venerate a small linen cloth identified by ancient tradition as the bloodstained…

For more than a thousand years, Christian pilgrims have traveled to Oviedo, Spain. At the cathedral there, they venerate a small linen cloth identified by ancient tradition as the bloodstained cloth that covered Jesus’ face after His death.

In the Middle Ages these pilgrims made the difficult detour from the Camino de Santiago (“the Way of St. James,” which led to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela) to Oviedo’s Cathedral of San Salvador. They traveled there in response to the popular refrain, “He who goes to Compostela and not to San Salvador honors the servant and forsakes the Lord.” The saying reflects the age-old tradition that Santiago de Compostela was the final resting place for St. James the Apostle, while San Salvador (“Holy Savior”) was famous for the relic of Christ’s death.

The Cloth’s Appearance

What makes this ancient cloth distinctive? The Sudarium of Oviedo, as it is called, is 34 by 21 inches. Its linen fabric is dirty, stained and wrinkled, with a large number of transparent brown “washed out” bloodstains. It does not contain a facial image, although its stains clearly conform to those that would be produced by the head of a man brutally crucified.

The stains are the product of pulmonary edema that flowed from the nose and mouth after death, as is characteristic of crucifixion victims — the same kind of flow that St. John witnessed from Christ’s side (see Jn 19:34). The cloth is also covered with aloe, which was used in first-century Jewish burials as a preservative. St. John testifies that Nicodemus brought 100 pounds of aloes and myrrh to anoint Jesus (see 19:39).

The Evangelist mentions a sudarium as “the cloth that had covered [Jesus’] head” (Jn 20:7), rolled up and set apart from the shroud in the tomb. This Latin term comes from sudor, meaning “sweat.” (In the Gospel account, the term appears in the Greek text as a Latin loan word, soudarión.) The word refers to a small, multipurpose cloth that was tied to the arm as a towel to wipe sweat from the face, also serving as a scarf, apron or turban.

In the case of severe trauma and when blood flowed at the time of death, Jewish law mandated use of a sudarium to retrieve the victim’s blood. Since blood was viewed as the “seat of life,” it was unthinkable to move a disfigured corpse without covering it, and it was imperative not to lose the blood because it was just as much a part of the body as the flesh. Burial of the blood was required, even to the extent of digging up blood-soaked earth and interring bloodstained clothes and linens.

The Sudarium’s Travels

An ancient tradition claims that St. Joseph of Arimathea gave Christ’s sudarium to St. Peter, who sometimes used it as a relic when praying for someone to be healed. It was later cared for by religious women in a cave close to the Monastery of St. Mark on the far side of the Jordan River. Its history took a turn when the Persians invaded Jerusalem and its environs in 612, necessitating drastic measures.

The face cloth was taken to Alexandria, Egypt, along with many other relics. Only two years later the Persians conquered this city as well, but by that time the chest of relics was already on its way to Spain, where it was placed in the custody of St. Isidore (560-636), bishop of Seville, an influential figure in the Western Church. After Isidore’s death, St. Ildephonsus, his disciple who became bishop of Toledo, brought the relic to that city, the new Christian capital of Spain. It remained there until the Muslim invasion.

The Moors invaded Spain in 711, reaching Toledo from the coast in a matter of days. The Christians, in fear for their relics, fled north to mountains that even the Romans had never conquered. Arabic manuscripts state that the relics were hidden in a well on a mountaintop called Monsacro, an ancient sacred peak near the city of Oviedo. St. James’ pilgrims would later visit a small hermitage at the site, making the treacherous climb to pay their respects.

After the danger had passed, King Alfonso II the Chaste (c. 759-842) built the Holy Chamber for the relics at his palace in Oviedo, now part of the Gothic cathedral. Their fame quickly spread throughout the Christian world.

Archival documents relate that King Alfonso II desired to embellish the Holy Chamber with a magnificent cross. In 808, two workers appeared at his palace to offer their services, and the king left them in a room with gold and jewels while he ate lunch. When he returned, a bright light was emanating from its interior, the men were nowhere to be found, and a beautiful cross was left behind.

This “Cross of the Angels” is one of the cathedral’s most precious objects. Because of it, Rome has granted a plenary indulgence to all those who visit the cathedral each year on Sept. 14, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Benediction with the Sudarium is traditionally held on Sept. 14 and Sept. 21, the first and last days of the Jubilee of the Holy Cross.

In medieval times, the pilgrims would hold up bread and other objects during this blessing, then use them later to cure the sick. Many miracles have been recorded over the years, such as a mute pilgrim who suddenly recovered his voice in 1415, and a woman who was freed from demonic possession as she prayed in front of the chest containing the Sudarium.

Unfortunately, the Holy Chamber was destroyed in 1934, just before the Spanish Civil War, when Marxists placed dynamite in the lower crypt of St. Leocadia. The Sudarium, however, was found miraculously unharmed in the rubble, and the original stones of the chamber were collected for reconstruction. It was rededicated at the end of the war in a ceremony presided over by General Francisco Franco.

The Sudarium and the Shroud

The Spanish Center for Sindonology, based in Valencia, engages in scientific research related to the Sudarium. This institution received permission to conduct a multidisciplinary study of the cloth in 1989. Their investigation has demonstrated the overwhelming probability that the Shroud of Turin — which many believe to be the cloth in which Jesus’ crucified body was buried — and the Sudarium of Oviedo actually covered the same crucifixion victim.

If this is indeed the case, then the only possibility that can be supported historically, scientifically and biblically is that this person was Jesus of Nazareth.

A number of significant marks on the two cloths coincide: blood flows, a contusion on the right cheek, the nose flattened to the right, a similar pattern of puncture wounds at the nape of the neck, and the presence of aloe and myrrh. The two burial cloths have been separated throughout their histories, so there is little chance that one could have been forged in order to resemble the other.

But there is another compelling piece of evidence that the cloths covered the same man. Jesus is the only crucifixion victim reportedly crowned with thorns. The Shroud of Turin has in fact a distinctive trickle of blood on the forehead in the shape of the Greek letter epsilon, which appears above a drop of the same blood, from a puncture wound. This pattern appears on the Sudarium in exactly the same place.

Both linens, then, covered a man who was scourged, crowned with thorns, struck in the face, brutally crucified and buried, just as Scripture describes Christ’s unique passion, death and burial.

Witness to Christ’s Suffering

Today, many believe that the Sudarium of Oviedo is an archaeological treasure now yielding its silent testimony to the Lord’s sufferings on the cross.

Scientists have determined that the cloth remained in place for up to one hour while the dead body was still on the cross, and for another hour after the body had been placed horizontally on the ground for the first burial anointing. At that time the linen was rewrapped and knotted at the top, as documented in a fifth-century paraphrase of John’s Gospel. When the cloth was later set apart in the tomb for burial, this knot would have given it the twisted or rolled-up appearance described by John.

In the Sudarium of Oviedo, tradition, science and history have all collaborated to explain the vagaries of John 20:7 and the meaning of the linens in the tomb. The mysterious “cloth that had covered [Jesus’] head” testifies to the excruciating pain of the crucifixion, and by its connection to the Shroud of Turin, points to the reality of the Resurrection.

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