Saturday, August 06, 2005
RELICS
Many years ago I had the opportunity to see a Tribute Penny in a glass case in a museum in Detroit. Standing there looking at it, wondering if this particular penny was "the one", was awesome. It was almost as though I were present at that moment when Christ used it (Mat. 22:19-20). It was almost as if I could touch and see Christ right there before me. The emotions were overwhelming.
Catholic veneration of relics has in it some of this sense of connection. We value them in the same way that we value our Grandmother's necklace or our Father's lighter. They confirm for us the fact of their existence.
The most important relic in Christiandom is the Shroud of Turin which contains the image of Christ which authenticates the resurrection. Many would like to deny His resurrection, and so the Shroud has been an object of controversy and efforts to prove it a forgery. Little known to even the investigators of the Shroud not many years ago was the Sidarium, the face cloth used to absorb the blood and mask the contorted face of Christ when He was taken down from the cross. This face cloth has not been placed on display except on rare occasions. Its history is known and documented. There is not the same controversy over this cloth as there is over the Shroud.
And it has been shown that the Sidarium matches the Shroud, which goes a long way to document the authenticity of the Shroud.
There is an interesting interview at the Ignatius Insight website about this cloth and its implications for demonstrating the authenticity of Scripture and the Catholic faith.
