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NOVA ET VETERA – SHROUD
from issue no. 04 - 2010

Visible clues to the Resurrection of Jesus



by Lorenzo Bianchi


Benedict XVI kneeling in prayer before the Shroud in Turin Cathedral, Sunday, 2 May 2010 [© Osservatore Romano]

Benedict XVI kneeling in prayer before the Shroud in Turin Cathedral, Sunday, 2 May 2010 [© Osservatore Romano]

The feature “Nova et Vetera” contains old and new matters, this time about the subject of the Resurrection of the Lord.
We reprint first of all an interview given us in 2000 in the wake of his article in La Civiltà Cattolica, by the Jesuit Jean Galot, who was then professor emeritus of Christology at the Pontifical Gregorian University (he died in April 2008). In it he emphasised the value of some advances in exegesis that, on the basis of careful scrutiny of the Greek words used by the Gospel of John, seemed and seem to render more plausible both the account of what John and Peter saw in the tomb where the body of Jesus had been laid, and the first incidence in John of the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus. Father Galot said: “The beginning of adherence to the belief in John, as reported in the Gospel, is caused by what he saw in the tomb. It is caused by clues minute, but real, visible”.
Interestingly, among other things, Galot’s affirmation that only in the presence of the signs does John recall the foretelling of the Resurrection that, moreover, he and the other apostles had repeatedly heard from Jesus himself. With this, Father Galot gives a glimpse of the essential interlocking between the words spoken by Jesus, the evidence found in the tomb as reported in the Gospel, and the beginning of John’s faith in the Resurrection of Jesus
The other text conveys interesting results that come from the latest research at an optical level on the Shroud of Turin.
Paolo Di Lazzaro, head of the Excimer Laser Laboratory of the ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development) Research Center of Frascati, provides an account of tests developed from 2005 by a team of Italian researchers and aimed at answering the question of questions about the Shroud, from a scientific perspective, namely: how was the image formed on it.
This research showed that by irradiating linen fabrics (similar to that of the Shroud) with ultraviolet laser beams of specific power values (billions of watts) and duration (billionths of a second) on a very limited area (a very few square centimeters) a chromatic effect can be produced with the same chemical and physical characteristics (especially the extreme surface shallowness of the order of thousandths of a millimeter) as those of the Shroud, something which other methodologies have not so far been able to reproduce in the laboratory. This would lead one to consider that the figure on the Shroud is the product of a physical phenomenon of irradiation by light, greater – taking account of the dimensions – by about fourteen thousand times more than that reproduced in the laboratory, with parameters of power and concentration in space and time such as not to be found in nature.
Clues, minute, but real, visible – as Father Galot said – in support of faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In announcing the Exposition of the Holy Shroud Cardinal Severino Poletto, archbishop of Turin, wrote on 1 April last year: “Blessed Sebastiano Valfrè, great devotee of the Holy Shroud, said: ‘The Shroud is a sign of Jesus comparable to the Cross, but with this peculiarity: the Cross received Jesus alive and returned Him dead, whereas the Shroud received Him dead and returned Him alive’”.


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