Without the Resurrection, said the Apostle Paul, our faith is in vain. Easter, of course, celebrates the Resurrection of Christ. Other than the birth of Christ commemorated at Christmas, no other day is as sacred to Christians as Easter Sunday.
As Shroud expert Dr. Mark Goodacre told Orlando, they encountered the “one relic of Jesus that stands out from all the others [relics].”
Each year, the Christian faithful mark this crucial event by going to church. Some honor the full Easter Triduum of Holy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Many further contemplate the sacred occasion by watching films that help absorb the fullness of Christ’s Passion. I know many who watch Mel Gibson’s magnum opus, The Passion of the Christ, a cinematic masterpiece. (The crude Frank Rich of the New York Times compared it to gay porn.) Another timeless work is Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 epic, Jesus of Nazareth. More recently, I particularly enjoyed the 2016 film, Risen. (READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Gutting Jesus: Feminist Cabrini, Secular Saint)
In that spirit, I can now recommend a new film. It’s a fresh, fascinating documentary on the Shroud of Turin, titled, The Shroud: Face to Face, written, directed, and produced by Robert Orlando. As some readers here know, Orlando and I together did the 2019 film on Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, The Divine Plan (full disclosure). That was an historical work, whereas this work by Orlando is personal as well as historical. It’s an intimate journey taken by Orlando himself, connected to his father’s death. He places himself in the narrative and takes viewers along his investigative search into the authenticity of the Shroud.
Of course, the roots of the Shroud are Biblical as well as historical. Christ was wrapped in a burial cloth when placed in his tomb. When Mary Magdalene and the women reached the tomb first, followed by John and Peter, they were shocked to find it empty, with only the linens that covered Jesus remaining behind.
Scripture itself conveys the linens’ significance. In the Gospel of John, it says that John, who got to the tomb ahead of Peter, “went in, and he saw and he believed.” (John 20:8-10) One wonders if John saw something in the cloth that made him believe. Yes, he saw that the tomb was empty, but so had Mary Magdalene, who wondered who had taken away her Lord’s body. What did John see in the cloth (perhaps) that made him believe?
In essence, the burial cloth left behind, which Jesus passed through before passing through the stone covering the tomb, served as the first evidence of the resurrected body.
Yes, think about that. That cloth held something most special. What happened to it thereafter? Where is it today? Seekers for centuries have searched for the Holy Grail, or for remnants of the Cross itself. But what of the burial cloth? What about the famed Shroud of Turin (click here and here for official websites) that many believe is the actual surviving cloth?
Orlando’s documentary calls it flatly: “The most investigated relic in the history of humankind: the Shroud of Turin. They say it holds the image of Jesus Christ, imprinted on his burial cloth.” As one of the experts interviewed by Orlando observes, “The Shroud could be a piece of physical evidence for the resurrection itself.” (READ MORE: Cabrini: It Gets Worse)
What’s especially striking about this particular image of Jesus is that it’s one that isn’t painted. It was produced by what Shroud experts believe had to have been some form of enormous energy that burst through it. Says Orlando: “Intense radiation of light is the key…. Extreme radiation of light is the catalyst for the image on the Shroud as well as the Resurrection.”
Advocates believe that this relic was imbued with energy from a divine source. One expert interviewed by Orlando, the brilliant Fr. Robert Spitzer, a priest and theologian specializing in the intersection of faith and reason, gives a detailed scientific explication. Quoting a July-August 2010 study published in the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, Spitzer says that the ultraviolet light necessary to form the Shroud image “exceeds the maximum power released by all ultraviolet light sources available today.” According to the authors of the study, this would require “pulses having durations shorter than one forty-billionth of a second, and intensities on the order of several [6-8] billion watts.” A single laser alone could not explain the image over the full length of the body. “In fact,” states Spitzer, “it would have taken 14,000 lasers like the one used by [the scientists in the study] to produce a full body image like the one on the Shroud.”
Moreover, added Spitzer: “That’s radiation [emanating] from a dead body. That never happens.” Indeed. And an enormous amount of energy to boot.
The mystery of the Shroud of Turin has intrigued Protestants and Catholics alike. It’s noteworthy that Orlando’s film includes more Protestant experts than Catholics. That’s important to know, because many evangelicals disregard the Shroud of Turin as just some “relic” that only interests Catholics. That is plainly not the case. In fact, though Orlando’s film is getting rave reviews from Catholics and endorsements from the likes of Bishop Robert Barron (click here and here), it’s quite telling that the biggest screening so far was at the Museum of the Bible.
Orlando spent hours with leading Protestant theologians who have done deep dives into the Shroud. His interviewees included renowned apologist Dr. Gary Habermas, Dr. Dale C. Allison Jr. of Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Craig Evans of Houston Theological Seminary, Dr. Ben Witherington III of Asbury Theological Seminary, and more. Witherington refers to the Shroud of Turin as “a photographic negative of a dead person” at a time when no such thing was technologically possible — i.e., when you couldn’t take pictures. In fact, it wasn’t until French and Italian photographers took pictures of the image in the 19th century and early 20th centuries that they realized what they were gazing upon. They now had themselves a photographic negative of a negative, in turn generating a positive image. Said Dr. Witherington: “Look at this image of a real person. The negative is the positive and the positive is the negative. How in the world did that happen? … What happened is that there was some light burst that imprinted his [Jesus’] image on the Shroud.”
These 19th-20th century photos of the cloth image allowed observers at last, many centuries later, to see more fully what one cannot see with the naked eye.
And what did they see? As Shroud expert Dr. Mark Goodacre told Orlando, they encountered the “one relic of Jesus that stands out from all the others [relics].” They encountered not a Medieval painting but an actual image that uncannily bears all the unique signs of the crucified Jesus: The nails, bleeding feet and hands, crown of thorns, the shoulder wound, and more. As Goodacre notes, there were many people crucified in Jesus’ time, but most certainly not everyone crucified had a spear thrust into his side and was wearing a crown of thorns pressed into his skull. The Shroud markings fully align with the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion, death, burial, and even resurrection (radiation through the linen clothes) of Christ.
Those who know about the debate over the Shroud will point to disputed questions over when it first emerged, which is commonly believed to be around the 13th century — i.e., over a thousand years after Christ’s burial. Orlando’s documentary, however, starts in the first century and then reports that the Shroud had been locked up and protected for hundreds of years before reemerging around the year 525. The Knights Templar allegedly got involved in bringing the Shroud from the Middle East to Europe, before it ultimately ended up in Turin, Italy — a long journey from Jerusalem. (READ MORE: It’s a Wonderful Film — Yes, the Best Ever)
Among the film’s beautiful visuals, Orlando takes the viewer to Turin (and to Rome). He is accompanied by Fr. Andrew Dalton, a young Catholic priest who, along with Orlando, is one of the main characters in the film. Dalton’s knowledge of the Shroud is second to none. His words and arguments are very convincing.
Dalton is especially compelling when dealing with the biggest objection to the Shroud, namely, the major carbon-14 dating investigation in the 1980s that led to assertions that the Shroud was not authentic. Those results claimed that the Shroud dates from the 13th-14th centuries, roughly the years 1260-1390.
This film skillfully dissects the flaws in that investigation, most notably that the 1980s scientists pulled samples from the outer perimeter of the cloth that might have been sewn into the fabric by nuns who tried to repair damage to it after a church fire in the 13th century. That isn’t the only flaw. I cannot do justice to the debate here. You’ll have to watch for yourself.
And really, that’s my main takeaway and advice to anyone reading this with interest. Watch the film yourself and come to your own conclusions. You may be struck to see that Orlando himself doesn’t wrap up (no pun intended) his Shroud presentation with a hard judgment for or against, though he clearly is more pro-Shroud.
The website for the film is https://www.theshroudfilm.com. It debuts this Easter weekend.
This film really is a must-see at Easter. Imagine: Christ may well have left behind physical evidence of his resurrected body — the very material that his body passed through as he rose again. Think about that. Is that worth considering for an hour and 10 minutes of your time this Easter weekend? Yeah, I’d think so.
