Letters to Young Girls

Dear Friend,

Mathilda is completely struck by the picture she is looking at on the screen. A sort of silence or sense of recollection overcomes her entire being. How can one describe the feeling that overwhelms her? Instinctively, her heart is gripped by a profound religious respect, mingled with compassion, pity and love.

Deeply moved, she slowly goes through the too few slides presented to Internet viewers. Seen from a different angle, each slide reveals this representation’s unparalleled realism. Not wanting to miss a single detail, Mathilda enlarges the pictures as much as she can. They are all really very poignant, arousing holy desires in her.

When Sister Lucette sent Mathilda the link for this slide show, she wrote: “To help and support you in your prayer, your faithfulness and your upsurges of love for God. Let us remain united during this Holy Week.”

Have you ever heard of the Holy Shroud of Turin, this large linen cloth upon which would have been inexplicably printed, as though on a negative, the picture of the man it covered? It is said that this would be the Shroud in which Jesus’ body was wrapped after His crucifixion and death. At the moment of the resurrection, a sort of radiation would have mysteriously marked the cloth with the full imprint, front and back, of His tortured body. Thus, it is preciously kept in the church of Turin in Italy, where it is venerated as a sacred relic.

The Shroud’s miraculous aspect has been recognized all over the world. For decades, scholars and scientists, believers and non-believers have been interested in it, multiplying the studies and analyses with all kinds of technologies and procedures. They have tried to discover the “secret” of this “image” reproduced without paint, dye, ink or color pigments, an image found, oddly enough, only on the surface of the cloth, without having penetrated the linen fibres. All are of the opinion that such a realization is humanly impossible.

Recently, a Spanish researcher, with a team of experts, special effects technicians, experts in forensic medicine and artists, worked at reproducing, in 3D, the body appearing on the Holy Shroud of Turin. Their final creation, the result of eight months of work, respects the information gathered in the studies, such as the precise measurements, the weight, the anatomy and the position of the body with the more swollen parts, the blood stains and the very many wounds, etc. Thus, this masterpiece becomes the most precise and the most perfect picture we have to date of the man who was wrapped in this Shroud. Given the material used, latex and silicone, it was possible to add real human hair, a beard and hairiness to the body, and this gave to this work of art the aspect of an unequaled and unique super-realism. It is as though we had a close-up look at a real human body with its hair, its pores, its freckles, etc.

It is too bad that the media never mentioned this beautiful and great realization which brought together scientists, artists and experts! Since the month of October 2022, this reproduction has been shown in Spain and it should then go on tour in Europe, before travelling the world in the years to come.

Over and above the artistic success of this work, this “image” speaks to our faith. It brings to mind the painful scenes Jesus experienced, which are spoken of in the Gospels: the cruel scourging, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of a heavy cross on His dislocated shoulder, the falls, the strikes to His face, the crucifixion, the lance thrust in the heart, besides reminding us that His friends fled and abandoned Him, and the crowd shouted at Him with hatred… Yes, let us look lovingly at this image being presented to us of Our Lord Jesus, so that it will be imprinted on our hearts.

This is truly what Marie-Paule was in the habit of doing. In a poem, she wrote: “Alone in this room, I contemplate your blood-stained Body, broken in all its limbs – What then are my child’s sufferings?” (Amour! Recueil de poems, p. 14)

To contemplate the suffering Jesus is to cause our friendship with Him to grow and to attend the school of the love of God and souls. It is also going to the source of consolation when we are scorned, rejected or ridiculed because of our values. In this contemplation, we find the strength to avoid the occasions of falls, to overcome temptations, to continue to be good and pure or to get up again if sins have tarnished, like new wounds, the image of Jesus in us.

In this Holy Week, here is a link where you will be able to go and view a few pictures of this super-realistic Jesus: https://fr.aleteia.org/slideshow/exposition-the-mystery-man/

He loves you. Do not forget it!

The Daughters of Mary