“Then it’s a good thing you’re comfortable with ambiguity.”
The next afternoon, in the warmth of the sun, Mom and I sat in rocking chairs on her front porch. Mom was feeling better, and the pleasant afternoon seemed to help her as much as anything had recently.
I still didn’t know what I would say to her exactly. She was dying. I wanted to give her hope, to do all I could to give her every chance of prolonging her life or at least having the best life possible in whatever time she had left, but I wasn’t sure how.
The afternoon was the warmest in the last few weeks, and sitting in its soft glow with Mom as an occasional pine needle floated down from the trees to the earth below, was a moving experience.
“Well?” she said.
“What?” I asked, stalling.
“Is the Shroud real?”
My pulse quickened as my stomach dropped.
I wanted to be able to tell Mom that I had solved the mystery of the Shroud of Turin, that it was the actual burial cloth of Christ, and that if anything could be used by God to heal her, this holy relic could, but I couldn’t.
“I still don’t know,” I said. “There’s an amazing amount of evidence on both sides. I think it’s a mystery that can’t be solved. And I don’t think it should be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think it should remain an enigmatic symbol of faith,” I said. “Then the question becomes not whether or not science can prove that it’s real, but whether or not we believe, whether or not we allow mystery to work its magic on us.”
“Do you believe?” she asked.
“I don’t have an easy answer for that one either,” I said. “I do believe that it’s something special, utterly unique in the world. And I think it can be a sign from God if we allow it to be. Isn’t that really all that matters? Not whether or not it actually covered the body of Jesus, but if it speaks to us of him. If it reminds us of his suffering, of a God who suffers with us, whose heart breaks for what you’re going through just like mine does.”
Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, and she reached over and took my hand.
“I’m haunted by the image on the Shroud,” I said. “And like all matters of faith, or art, it doesn’t matter how it came to be or if it can be authenticated or scientifically validated. Its only validity is what it does for me. In that sense, I can say it’s real.”
“So do you think we should go and view it?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t.”
I thought about it for a long time, trying my best to weigh everything and determine what was in her best interest, saying a short prayer for guidance.
“Yes,” I said. “I think we should.”
“Do you think it’s possible I’ll be healed?” she asked hopefully, her tears changing as her face lit up.
I nodded. “I honestly believe anything’s possible.”
The most venerable and venerated relic of all time had been slipped out of the silver casket that had protected it for centuries, through fire and water, doubt and blind belief, and gingerly unspooled under the supervision of Giovanni Cardinal Saldarini and a German textile conservation expert. After the top cloth, a red taffeta sewn by Princess Clotilde of Savoy in 1886, had been pulled back, the fragile, scarred length of ancient linen had been smoothed into place in a metal and glass display case built precisely to its dimensions.
We were gazing up at it.
Mom and I had flown to Turin, Italy, two days ago to be a part of the estimated three million people who would line up over the next eight weeks to view this most sacred of cloths.
The cathedral was as ornate as any building I had ever been in, the sweet scent of incense lingering thickly, an olfactory match for its opulence.
The air in the case that held the Shroud had been drawn out and replaced with argon, an inert gas. It hung horizontally at the intersection of the Turin Cathedral’s nave and transept, near the center of the cathedral’s magnificent built-in cross.
Beside me, Mom gazed up at the image burned into the Shroud like a woman seeing a vision, herself a vision, mouth open, head back, eyes wrinkled at the corners as she squinted to see, her face made fresh by awe and wonderment.
What she was seeing I could only guess, but I felt that what she beheld was far more than an ancient cloth bearing an enigmatic image. Perhaps she was seeing nothing less than the visible image of the invisible God.
I was.
Not that I was suddenly convinced that the Shroud was a silent witness to the resurrection, but that even if I were staring at the image produced by an artist in the Middle-Ages, it, like all art, was evidence of the divine. And like all art, what we see in it tells us as much about ourselves as the object we’re beholding in hushed reverence.
What does what I saw say about me?
That I’m a believer. I believe in mystery and possibility, that nothing is impossible. Not the existence of God. Not a virgin birth. Not a God-come-flesh. Not a resurrection from the dead. Nothing. Not even a love that is stronger than death—a love that is itself an evidence of the existence of God, of the justification of the hope I felt. Hope for Mom, for me, for the world.
Mom let out a small, but audible gasp.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I could tell she wanted to say more, but couldn’t.
Only time would tell if this had cured her disease, but I had no doubt that our holy pilgrimage had healed her. Her humanity was healed. She finally and fully accepted the fathomless forgiveness she had been offered.
And she forgave herself.
Standing there beside her, gazing up at the ghostly image, I felt newly baptized, fully submerged in the healing presence of Christ.
Our awe and reverence for the sacredness of life, of individual moments like this one, which hinted at eternity, was restored to us like when we were children.
Both of us were in some sense healed, wounded mother and son, as if in some sense reflecting the wounded son and mother of the nearby Pietà—united with them in humanity, in pain, in love, in faith, in mystery, and in hope for divinity.
Flesh and Blood Page 26