Chapter 39: Compressed Reality

The cloth of the Shroud and the image on the Shroud are two separate realities.

Microscopic images of the threads and fibers show us the multiple layers that make up the fabric that lies beneath the image. God is the omniscient transparency that constitutes and permeates every layer of scaffolding supporting the image resting on the fibrils.

In the image, an exponential compression of the energy that is God presents us with myriad complexities. It is as though we are being shown that God can expand and contract to levels far beyond what we can comprehend in this reality called human life.

It is comical to think that, among all the man made cathedrals and churches, statues and icons, just a scrap of cloth in the universal scheme of things was His chosen, fragile vehicle for ultimate power. His tortured imprint and the super-charged density of His resurrection remind us that suffering is frail and God's power is supreme.

Both the image and the cloth have been subjected to intense research, study, and scrutiny. Oddly, though, many people fixate on the carbon dating results of the cloth. Regardless if one is using those results to profess that the image is a fake or if one is arguing that the results are flawed, the age of the cloth remains the primary focus for many experts.

Let's assume the carbon dating results are valid and the cloth dates to the Middle Ages – how is that proof that the image is not that of the crucified Christ? That kind of logic would be similar to locking someone in a pitch black room and convincing the person that it is night time, when in actuality the sun is brightly shinning. We cannot manipulate time and reality to stop the sun from shinning simply by placing it in a context where it appears to be absent or by adamantly insisting that it is not shinning.

Likewise, even if we were able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the carbon dating results are flawed and that the cloth does indeed date back to the first century, we still have no proof that the image is Christ's or any explanation for how it got onto the cloth.

Our human timeline is our tracking device for shaping our history. God has no history. His fabric always was and always is and always will be.

The cloth itself, no matter its age, is merely the proof that we have no proof. We only have the shinning sun of our freely chosen (or not chosen) faith.

Why do we compress reality by assuming that Christ wanted us to solve the mystery of the Shroud?

Perhaps He simply wanted to grace us with proof... that our faith reality (like His image on the cloth) is at once our vast mystery and the black hole density in His forever-never, simultaneously contracting and expanding schematic.

Chapter 38: The Top of Happiness

In a kind of cause and effect way, we have sin to thank for salvation.

Someone had to save us from ourselves; Christmas brings us that someone.

Christ absolves all humanity through His suffering, death, Resurrection, and Ascension. But we remain imprisoned by our individual unhappiness as we make our weary way towards His gift.

We prefer to argue and disagree with each other about the existence and validity of salvation rather than commit to attaining it. Look at the controversy surrounding the Shroud if you need an example.

The beginning of a New Year is a well-timed event. What would it mean to each of us (and all of us) if we were to resolve ourselves to:

Reach in to the bottom of our unhappiness

Figure out once and for all what drives it, what feeds it

Absolve ourselves

Exchange ourselves to remedy it

Reach up to the top of our happiness

What if individual salvation was the collective New Year's resolution, our here-on-earth gift to ourselves and to God.