Wednesday, March 25, 2009

INTERESTING ARTICLE ON THE SHROUD...

The Christ "Pantocrator" Icon

at St. Catherine's Monastery Sinai

and the Shroud of Turin

In 544 AD, a cloth bearing an image of Jesus was discovered hidden above a gate in Edessa's city walls. Six years later, an icon was produced at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai.

There are startling similarities between the icon and the image we see on the Shroud of Turin. There are, perhaps, too many similarities for it to be a mere coincidence.

The general placement of facial features including eyes, nose and mouth. In fact, when a transparency of the Shroud face is superimposed over the icon, there are no significant variations.
The hair on the left side (your right) falls on the shoulder and swoops outward. The hair on the other side is shorter.
The eyes are very large.
The nose is particularly thin and long. The face is gaunt.
There is a gap in the beard below a concentration of facial hair that is just below the lower lip.
The neck is particularly long.

It is particularly interesting to note that starting about this time a dramatic change took place in the way Jesus was portrayed on coins, icons, frescos and mosaics. Before this time, Jesus was usually portrayed in storybook settings such as a young shepherd or modeled after the Greek Apollo.

After the discovery of the Edessa Cloth, images of Jesus were suddenly full-frontal facial images.

Transparency of High Contrast Shroud Face

Superimposed Over the

St. Catherine's Icon

By placing a high contrast transparency over the Christ Pantocrator icon we see the symmetry patterns, particularly for the nose.

Some things stand out as differences:

The outer hairline on the left side (your right) of the Shroud face seems more compressed towards the face. The hair seems to fall straight down. But this is due to an anomaly of dark bands on each side of the visible hair. Studies of the banding effect on the Shroud of Turin's image suggest that the hairline is indeed much closer to what we see on the Pantocrator icon.
The beard on the Pantocrator icon is not forked as it appears to be on the Shroud. Banding studies do not suggest an explanation for this difference.
The mustache on theicon face is narrower and falls down while the mustache on the Shroud is clearly broad and straight across. Banding studies do show that the mustache on the Shroud's face is much more like the icon than was previously thought.

The image below was produced by filtering out banding. Yellow lines represent improved identification of the angle of the mustache and the tentative hairline edge. This corresponds more closely with the shape of the hair on the icon.

VISIT : http://www.shroudstory.com/

Pope Urges Pastors
to Learn and Teach Liturgy

Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging pastors to catechize parishioners about the depth of the liturgy and the meaning of the sacraments as encounters with God.
The Pope affirmed this in a meeting Feb. 26 with parish priests of the Diocese of Rome, a Lenten tradition, in which he answered their questions and concerns.
He noted, "What is really important for me is that the sacraments [...] not be something foreign along with more contemporary endeavors." He added, "It can easily happen that the sacrament remains somewhat isolated in a more pragmatic context and becomes a reality that is not altogether inserted in the totality of our being."
The Pontiff stressed the need for catechesis in the parishes. He affirmed that it is important that God "not be distant but reconcilable, concrete, that he enter our lives and really be a friend with whom we can talk and who talks with us."
He continued, "We must learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, up close, really enter into contact with him, learn to listen to him and to allow him to enter into us."
Sacramental communion, explained the Holy Father, is not just taking a piece of bread, but rather is opening "my heart so that the Risen One will enter the context of my being, so that he is within me and not just outside of me, and thus speaks with me and transforms my being."
"He gives me the sense of justice, the dynamism of justice, in zeal for the Gospel," noted Benedict XVI.
He affirmed, "This celebration, in which God not only comes close to us, but enters into the fabric of our existence, is essential to really be able to live with God and for God and to take the light of God to this world."
Body of Christ
The Pope stated that this understanding also "leads me to the other because the other receives the same Christ, as I do."
He continued: "Hence, if the same Christ is in him and me, we also are no longer separate individual beings. Herein lies the birth of the doctrine of the Body of Christ, because we have all been incorporated if we receive the Eucharist correctly in the same Christ.
"Hence, my neighbor is truly close: we are no longer two separate 'I's, but we are united in the same 'I' of Christ."
The Pontiff told the pastors that "Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really go to the depth of our existence, to be, in fact, education to open myself to the voice of God, to let myself be opened to break this original sin of egoism and to open my existence profoundly, so that I will really be just."
He noted, "We must all learn the liturgy better, not as something exotic but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open easily to a distant man, but which is, on the other hand, precisely openness to the other, to the world."
The Holy Father emphasized: "We must all collaborate in celebrating the Eucharist ever more profoundly: not only as a rite but as an existential process that touches me profoundly, more than anything else, and changes me, transforms me and, by transforming me, sparks the transformation of the world that the Lord desires and of which He wishes to make me an instrument."