In Turin, Italy, is kept one of the most famous and precious cloths in the world - the Shroud of Turin. This Shroud is the burial cloth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, from over two thousand years ago. And while this fact is amazing in itself, more incredible yet is that on this cloth one can see the image of Jesus miraculously imprinted on it. We can see the same Jesus Christ that we pray to each and every day - we can see a photograph of God!

It wasn’t until 1898 that this was made truly possible. For many centuries, the only thing that could be made out was a faint brownish color - an image clearly of a dead, crucified man. The picture was clear, but details where somewhat faint. But in 1898, the Shroud was photographed for the first time ever by Secundo Pia.

Before the time of digital images, photography was a skill and a task all to itself. Taking a picture meant more time and work in those days, and there were several processes before the final photograph was complete. Because the image was being captured onto real film inside the camera, the film had to be developed. And in this stage, you would see a ‘negative’ of the photo taken. The negative does not ‘look right’, because it is a reverse of the picture – meaning that the light areas are dark and the dark areas are light.

And so when Secundo Pia was developing his photograph of the Shroud of Turin, he had to process the negative for his picture. But when he did - a shocking discovery was made. The negative did not look strange at all. Instead, the human features on the Shroud became incredibly defined and clear – and it looked like and had the qualities of an actual photograph of Jesus.

This means that the ‘original’ image on the Shroud itself is in fact a negative and must be reversed in order to see the true picture – the photograph - clearly. This is an amazing characteristic of the Shroud that has never been seen in any other relic or artifact, especially anything predating the modern age of cameras.

Since that discovery, this cloth has become one of the most researched and scrutinized relics in the world. God, always working through all elements of His creation, has left for believers and non-believers alike visible, undeniable proofs of His incredible power to prove His Truth. Here are only a few of them:

Pollen - Every single plant on earth gives off its own unique pollen, which generally can only been seen through a microscope. As pollen travels through the air, it settles on various materials. So if a material (for example, cloth) has a plant’s pollen on it is because the cloth was exposed to the open air near the vicinity of the plant. As many plants are unique to certain geographical areas of the world, identifying pollen on an object is a means of tracing where the object has been in the past. A certain scientist, specialized in the field that can track pollen back to their original plants, discovered that many samples of microscopic pollen found on the Shroud come from species of plant that are only located in Palestine - a number of which only grow just outside of Jerusalem. Therefore, at some point in the Shroud’s history it was exposed to the open air near Jerusalem in the Holy Land.

The Fabric Itself - The fabric of the Shroud is made of Herringbone weave, a rather uncommon weave. Some scientists, who have attempted to make the claim that the Shroud was created in the Middle Ages, have tried and failed to find any Medieval artifacts that are similar to the Shroud. However, in a Jewish fortress at Masda, a cloth was found in tombs there which have been dated to be from 40 B.C. to 70 A.D. Mechtild Flury –Lemberg, a famous textile expert, states that the particular stitching technique used on the hem of the cloth of Masda is the same type to be found on the hem of the Shroud of Turin. She said that the stitching was the work of a professional and stated that “this kind of weave was special in antiquity because it denoted an extraordinary quality”.

The Sudarium - Another amazing attribute of the Shroud is it’s link with another famous relic cloth - the Sudarium of Oviedo, Spain. The “Sudarium” is the cloth used to clean the face of Christ during His burial. It is 84 x 53 cm in size. It has no defined image on it, but there are clear, large stains of blood. St. John refers to this smaller cloth, actually, in his Holy Gospel; 20:5-7. The ‘napkin’, or small cloth, that he is speaks of is clearly separate from the longer, larger cloth that Jesus was wrapped in.

The same blood type is found on both cloths, type AB - a blood type which is only found in approximately 3% of human beings. Furthermore, it can be clearly seen by the formation of the blood on the Sudarium that it was used on the face of a man who had Jewish features - a prominent nose and pronounced cheek bones - the same features seen on the Shroud. In fact, on the Sudarium the nose is a little over three inches long - which is the exact same length as the nose on the Shroud. When the stains from the bloody beard are aligned with the beard on the Shroud they match up. The shapes of the Blood wounds from the back of the head also align perfectly with those on the Shroud. Additional to the shapes of the stains are 70 places on the front of the head, and 50 on the back where further blood spots overlay perfectly on both relics. This come to a total of over 120 places where both cloths sync up. It is therefore undeniable that these two cloths were used at the exact same time to cover the exact same face. (On a side note, the famous 13-centuries-old Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano, Italy also contains this same blood type AB).

Through all of these different scientific researches and studies many fascinating discoveries have been made. In the late 1970’s a very large team of specialized scientists received complete access to the Holy Shroud for testing. During that time they studied thoroughly everything about the Shroud, and extensively analyzed it, using all of the most modern equipment and procedures.

In October of 1981, they gave the conclusions of what the tests proved: “No pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the fibrils. X-ray, fluorescence and microchemistry on the fibrils preclude the possibility of paint being used as a method for creating the image. Ultra Violet and infrared evaluation confirm these studies. Computer image enhancement and analysis by a device known as a VP-8 image analyzer show that the image has unique, three-dimensional information encoded in it… Thus, the answer to the question of how the image was produced or what produced the image remains, now, as it has in the past, a mystery.” As are all of God’s miracles.

After thoroughly examining, testing and studying every angle of the Holy Shroud, these scientists could not explain how the image got there. Neither could they explain how the image is there nor what the image is even made of! There are no paints, stains, dyes, colorings - nothing to explain how the faint image that we see is there. And not only this, but these ‘markings’ have 3 dimensional information contained in it - information which could only have been read within the past 50 years of technology! Never has anyone seen any cloth, much less one clearly over 2,000 years old, to be able to produce a 3D image only seen with modern technology. But God can do anything.

While the Shroud contains many things that tell us about its own past and amazing qualities, what is more important, of course, is the image itself. God in His Mercy, has preserved for these many centuries an image of His Own Self for the whole world to see. Even more so during our own modern age, for before the invention of lenses and cameras, it was really not possible to see what we can see now. There are many details of the Passion and Death of Christ that are best told by a photograph.

Please visit me again on our next update, for an investigation of those details and the soul-stirring story they tell. Meanwhile, Sir Stephen has added three new images in his Art Gallery that are pictures of the actual Shroud of Turin. Please click this link to visit the Gallery and download the images. You are heartily welcome and encouraged to download and share these images for your personal edification and meditation - especially during this holy season of Lent.