Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-30-22

America has become so secularized that we are stripping our traditional religious observances – Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving – of spiritual distinctives, re-branding them in schools, public squares, and the media as Winter, Spring, and Fall Fests, and more innocuous labels when they can be found.

Even worse, our secular solemnities also are being neutered. The greatest of presidents whose lives are inspirations have been consigned to virtual snow-globes and shaken up as flakes in a generic “presidents day” flurry, lost among unfortunate and forgotten nonentities. Fireworks and parades on the Fourth of July are symbols that largely have yielded to barbecues and reunions. All of those former commemorative days have morphed into excuses for long weekends and cheesy TV commercials.

Suffering not the least in this rush to homogenize our cultural heritage is Memorial Day. I thank God that some people still recall and honor the origin of the patriotic day, originally “Decoration Day,” established for visits to graves and monuments of fallen heroes.

We can be thankful for small favors, but I generally curse the impulse that kidnaps Memorial Day and uses it as an excuse to “mark the beginning of summer” and inspire weekend sales at furniture outlets and used-car lots.

My dad served in World War II (he overflew D-Day in a Weather Squadron) and came home; so “his day,” as with millions of others, and from other wars, was Veterans Day. Memorial Day honors those who sacrificed their lives.

Military service always incurs sacrifice, whether men were drafted or men and women who volunteer. And no less (to the nation’s shame) spouses and children who often sacrifice greatly too. From my perspective, and what inhabits my desire to memorialize and hold these dead in awe, is what motivated those service personnel whom we honor.

In every war through history, combatants sometimes have been motivated by hate. It manifests itself in all sorts of ways, from summoning bravery… to action “beyond the call of duty”… to, occasionally throughout history, savagery and atrocities. The range of motives and performance is wide – but I have always believed that the essence of hatred, if it could be distilled and measured, routinely is stronger in civilian leaders than in the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

Largely this is due to the underlying causes of many wars. As a historian and as a Christian, I will unfurl the flag of my cynicism. Wars have been fought for noble reasons, including defense and rescue operations. Many also have been fought for territorial gain or commercial advantages – often brutal, yet arguable extensions, as von Clausewitz wrote, of politics and diplomacy.

Cynicism joins the battle, so to speak, when we recognize how many wars have been fought, and lives lost, over hollow objectives; futile suicide missions; changing war goals; civilian slaughter; friendly embraces of recent enemies; abandoned rationales for “why we fight”; and neglect of gold-star families and veterans’ needs.

Should I mention such things on a Memorial Day? I cannot help it; but in my mind such memories inspire a greater motivation – indeed, a necessity – to honor the dead. If not the wars, memorialize the dead.

Most fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, I believe, have not fought and died out of hatred, even against malign enemies… but more out of love.

They love their homeland. They love their families, their Main Streets, their heritage. They love their flag. They love peace, the ultimate goal. More – and here is what leaves me awestruck and deserves our “memorialization” – they love service. They love serving. They love and accept and embrace sacrifice.

How many people have that “DNA” any more? Thank God for the “few and the proud” in all military branches… and we surely can wonder whether the “few” are growing fewer in society. If America’s shores and cities and towns were invaded, would regular citizens be willing (or able, if guns are confiscated) to rise up in defense?

I truly wonder whether the ghostly echelon of the fallen – whose graves I hope we all will visit on Memorial Day, even if the cemeteries and the gravestone names are unfamiliar – would have been so dedicated if they could have looked ahead and could have seen what has America has become. I won’t start a checklist of horrible transformations in our society, but if you have read this far, you probably agree with me. If not… well, the right publicly to disagree, which is threatened, remains one of things our fallen heroes died to protect.

Salute. Shed a tear. Raise a prayer. We honor fallen heroes for wearing the uniform, embracing the flag, and sacrificing “their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor.” Let us honor them too for America’s dwindling (God forbid) spirit of service and sacrifice.

Let us pray that not one of them, after all, did not die in vain.

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Click: Memorial Day – Taking Chance

5-23-22

It is one thing that you and I occasionally ignore God’s Commandments; too frequently we break the laws of God outright and defy His will. We will sin and rebel and disobey, even in our “best” times and despite good intentions. Occasionally? Actually, countless times; but who’s counting? (Oh. God is.)

We have sin natures. Accepting Christ’s atoning work on the cross – that He accepted the punishment we deserve as sinners before a Holy God – will not completely erase our tendencies to sin, nor acts of sin.

A mighty change in the situation, however, is that we are forgiven when confessing the finished work of Jesus, the Message of the Cross.

But I wonder: It is one thing that we tend to defy His will for our lives and ignore Jesus’s teachings about duties as devoted believers in Him…

We might ignore His commands. But how often do we ignore His blessings?

This is a serious question, because it is a serious matter. As sinners, we need forgiveness, and that is why God became Incarnate. He became flesh, dwelt among humankind, knew our temptations and sorrows and pain; He suffered death but overcame it that we might live as He did, and does.

That is theology: We all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. Jesus redeemed us.

Jesus did not come that we learn Gratitude. He did not die in order that we break out in Thanksgiving. It was not necessary that He go to the cross as the way for us to voice Praise.

… those attitudes will follow the saved sinner, born-again Christians. But our focus should be Jesus’s focus: the remission of sins.

However.

I believe that God is grieved when we do not experience Gratitude, or express Thanksgiving, or sing praises to Him. We do not want to grieve God. But it always amazes me when Christians do not exhibit unbridled joy when considering Who God is, and What He has done!

… perhaps it is because we simply do not think about it? Do we take His gifts, and His love, for granted? God forbid!

It is not that He has been shy on the matter! Give thanks to the Lord for He is good… He promises joy unspeakable and full of glory… The JOY of the Lord is my strength… Praise the Lord, o my soul; and all that is within me!… Praise the Lord in song!… Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!… Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His mercy endures forever… Come before His presence with thanksgiving!…

…Through Jesus, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise.

You know the Bible verses, and many others. If these are not commands, they are recommendations! Seriously, they are, even more then recommendations, a checklist of natural responses we should have to the Love of God.

We all have been where I have been lately. There are times when believers – who know the truth, who have accepted Jesus – just get to places where it somehow is difficult to summon that gratitude, and thanksgiving, and praise. The world closes in; circumstances oppress us; the enemy taunts.

Well, that is the time to do what that verse says: offer a sacrifice of praise.

You don’t feel like doing it? That’s why it’s called a sacrifice: it’s not supposed to be easy… and would not be worth much if it were easy. There can never be a moment, or something that you can think of, that you can not thank God for. Begin: A minor thing; a silly thing; a little thing.

Your mind will move to bigger things. Fuller blessings. Greater thanks. The devil will stop taunting and the Holy Spirit will start whispering to you; then, shouting. You will move into a place where your attitude is adjusted. You will not only be praising; you will be happy; you will be joyful, a different thing; you will be grateful. And so will God.

He is worthy of all praise. And you will sense that you have entered the Courts of Praise with thanksgiving!

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Click: Thank You

5-16-22

According to the calendars, Winter is long past. Yet around these parts I was still turning on the heat overnight, and across swaths of the continent there have been strange late-season snowstorms. Where it hasn’t been chilly or snowy, we have had rainstorms and floods and, devastatingly, postponed baseball games.

Only last week a friend and I were walking, noting the lack of flowers and leaves and even buds on trees in the neighborhood. One of the joys of Spring is to see the light-green fuzz that appears like mists on seemingly dead trees and bushes. Spring fragrances in the air are overdue, too; like half of America perhaps they, too, have moved to Florida.

Winter has its charms, of course; but when it overstays its welcome it can affect our moods.

Perhaps my own mood is really affected by a confluence of events. Occasionally in these essays I have been inspired by coincidences: several friends enduring similar crises or illnesses; odd similarities in news stories; prayer needs for health or finances or family matters addressed to me.

Neither God nor the cosmos is trying to tell me something; certainly not at the expense of others’ lives. Sometimes, I believe, we all simply happen to notice things we otherwise overlook. And of course there are coincidences. So it is not morbid, but merely clinical, to mention that I recently have been aware of people dying, including more than during a typical week.

I am writing a book about the cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, and Mickey Gilley, and conducting interviews. This week Mickey, 86, died. A situation shared with me, a friend diagnosed with a brain tumor previously regarded as an eye affliction. The father of a close friend died this week, a few days after my friend and I had dinner. An old, dear friend who has devoted her life to caring for a daughter who was suddenly disabled decades ago shared that she faces her daughter’s seriously declining health. My sister called and urged that we discuss our wills, for logical reasons.

And so forth. There are other reminders. One becomes more aware of, not desensitized to, stories of homicides and suicides in the news; body-counts in foreign wars and breached borders; of statistics of aborted children.

But we have just come through a season where we contemplated death… and life. Easter, that is. Jesus’s willing sacrifice of His life, something fairly overwhelming to comprehend, was immediately assuaged two thousand years ago — and each moment we meditate upon it today: the affirmation of life.

He overcame death. He rose from the dead. He lives today.

We need to contemplate; we need to meditate. Do not “check the box” – “Yes. Son of God. Died. Rose. Miracle. OK, is Easter over?” How often do we miss the lesson of the Resurrection?

God planned this scenario not merely to prove the Divinity of Jesus Christ. The miracles suggested that, and His Ascension would confirm that.

The Resurrection of Christ occurred not only to show us that He overcame death… but to illustrate the promise that we can overcome too. Accepting Christ as your Savior promises that you, too, will “conquer sin and death.” Those who believe “will have eternal life.” More than life in Heaven’s Paradise, you will live in virtual mansions; Jesus promised, “If it were not so, I would have told you.”

Life is not the negation of death, but triumph over it.

The horrible aspects of this world will be left behind. And what awaits? Our loving Father; eternal peace; joy unspeakable. Also awaiting us will be the people we love. And have “lost.” Those loved ones, the Bible promises us, who suffered pain and disease and infirmity, will be whole again.

When we gain Heaven ourselves, we will not only see the King… but we shall see our loved ones too. In perfect bodies. Well, and whole.

People on earth, even His children, do not live forever. And, because there is sin in the world, there is disease. And corruption. And affliction. And suffering. Some of these problems brought on by ourselves; some because the physical realm which includes sickness, cruelty, and sorrow, makes war upon us. These are other reasons to look upon our great Hope and to trust His promises.

So we look to the Life ahead. We trust in God’s mercy and, as my friend I mentioned above reminded me, grace. It is a gift we cannot manufacture ourselves, but we can seek it and accept it. Grace, grace, God’s grace. What do some people call it?

Oh, yes; amazing Grace. Even the angels do not know Grace, for they have not overcome the trials of this life nor the bonds of death. But we can savor it!

Suddenly, today, I realized I heard birds chirping this morning at dawn. Nature’s alarm clock! I took another walk, and the air had that special fragrance of renewed life. There was green fuzz on trees and bushes. Welcome back! The grass will need mowing soon! Seemingly overnight, the dogwoods burst forth in their brilliant flowery branches.

Death might seem to surround us, but life always returns, life prevails, life embraces us. Like seedlings that emerge from cracks in giant rocks, life wins – examples of the promise we have, as that old Gospel song says…

“There ain’t no grave gonna keep this body down!”

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Click: Ain’t No Grave

5-9-22

Readers will know that I am not skirting with blasphemy in the essay’s title, but rather surrendering to proper reverence.

And I will not even mention the cliché, at Mother’s Day, that all days are mothers’ days. Whoops, I just did. The value of clichés, since they inherently are true, can dissipate if applied to every day of the year, so let Hallmark have its fun… but do not lose sight of what we properly should pause and cherish.

God ordained the family unit. Fathers are responsible for provision, leadership models, and authority (I Timothy 3; Ephesians 5; etc) – heavy responsibilities. Women are different, and different beyond the evident characteristics. Mothers, more so.

That there is a qualitative difference between motherhood and fatherhood is axiomatic, not original to me. Those people who have mothers and fathers (so that includes most all of humankind, by my count) instinctively know this. The bonds between mothers and children simply are different than the case with fathers, despite dads’ roles as models and teachers, examples and disciplinarians. The bonds that tie us to mothers involve strength and tenderness; instruction and forbearance; rules and forgiveness.

Fathers can seem weak when they violate rules they set down; but somehow mothers are at their best when they bend; understanding, hugging, smiling. And, somehow, mothers’ work in this regard ultimately is more effective.

Through all of animate creation, the unique aspects of motherhood have the same invisible bonds, tender but strong; gentle but formative.

No wonder they have their special day.

And how interesting it is in these times, this current Mother’s Day, that such thoughts are pertinent to controversies that bizarrely rage in public discourse. Theodore Roosevelt, whom my readers know I quote slightly fewer times than the Bible, once said in typical wisdom, about the role of women in modern life: “Equality of rights does not mean equality of function.” How prescient, although I doubt that even he could have foreseen the popular delusions and madness of crowds that has gripped an approximate half of the American population.

He held these truths to be self-evident, that there are two sexes; that there are physical differences between them; and that (as careful reading of relevant Bible verses hold) no denigration nor subjugation nor modified rights may be deduced from such facts of nature.

The absence of common sense that reigns today reflects a pathology that transcends feminism, ignores physical realities, and is, in the end, a revelation of self-destructive tendencies… even self-loathing, self-hate. American civilization has devolved into a Culture of Death. A healthy nation cannot perpetuate itself nor survive when it tolerates the destruction of the nuclear family… when divorce is a casual and common thing… when drug abuse and alcoholism are rife… when child abuse and spousal abuse are similarly common… when crimes are not prosecuted, and nihilism is excused… when homosexuality and other gender disinformation is tolerated and encouraged – the very definition of a death-culture, the impulses contrary to procreation… when aborting babies is encouraged by the sanction of law.

Some people, of course, call those babies “collections of cells” or “blobs,” yet fingers, faces, and feelings are evident by photographs and other means… as if we need such science. (Recently, for a season, people of faith were painted as enemies of science.) And abortionists sell bodies parts and tiny organs from these collections of cell and blobs: interesting. A commercial impetus, perhaps, for elected officials who advocate abortions until full term and even after birth. A step from euthanasia; “mercy killings” with scant mercy.

Because of current legal debates, this aspect of the Culture of Death rages once again. It is a political litmus-test like no other, this dogmatic commitment, almost a maniacal frenzy, to abort babies. To force people to assent, no matter their moral beliefs. To require every citizen to pay for the deaths of those babies, the decisions of those mothers. Even the underpinning is fungible: “our bodies,” except when it comes to vaccines, or schoolchildren’s minds…

By the way, regarding my terminology here, even the President of the United States — unintentionally uttering the truth, going off the abortion-lovers’ script — this week talked about “aborting children.” Not blobs of cells, not fetuses. But intellectual schizophrenia of these people should not be a surprise. At one moment they defend women; at the next they claim (as a Supreme Court nominee did) inability to define a “woman.” They work fervently to deny and destroy many aspects of being a women. They are feminists who regard femininity as shameful; they invent privileges but reject the natural (and beneficial) perquisites afforded to women.

Sixty-million children have been killed (or insert the attempts at use euphemisms like “terminated.” What a schreckliche term, if you know what I mean) since Roe v Wade was decided. At one time I was casual, even an advocate, of the procedure. I have regretted that and spent many sleepless nights and raised many pleas for forgiveness… and so have many others. Part-mothers and almost-fathers: many have seen the light and know that God “does not despise a broken and contrite heart.” He offers mercy and forgiveness.

In the meantime, we face the possible re-adjustment in this contemporary practice of infant sacrifice; the contemporary style is to sacrifice children to the gods of convenience and numb morals. We also face the prospect of another season of civil unrest. We hear the hysterical predictions – that women will lose the right to vote! that segregation will return to water fountains!! that slavery surely will return!!! Home addresses, phone numbers, and personal information about the wives and children of justices and senators are being published, to enable physical intimidation or worse.

The “end” of abortions is not threatened, however, except in the “minds” of the shock-troops of this Culture-of-Death revolution. To the surprise of some people and the dismay of others, the complete rejection of Roe will not abolish abortion in America. Each state will decide that question. So, fasten your seat belts.

The United States is one of only seven nations (out of 198) on the entire globe to permit abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Good company: the enlightened gulags of North Korea and Communist China are in our club. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in a lengthy law review article that she thought Roe was wrongly decided; and she predicted the turmoil we currently endure. Almost 20 years ago I interviewed Norma McCorvey (the “Roe” of the case). The tale of her early manipulation, and fear, and regret, was heart-rending. Life-long, she was a pawn in this deadly game – not game of life, as a saying goes; but of death.

To my original point – the “nub” of Mother’s Day. Speaking as a man who completely cherished the love of my mother, the joy of my wife giving birth and rearing our precious children, the unspeakable pride, seeing my own daughters becoming nurturing mothers – I am, in a way I cannot fully express, admiring of those Human Havens, moms.

Why women pretend not to be women; why they despise the precious and unique gifts they possess; why they insanely invent new genders and regard Rights as Wrongs and vice-versa; why they cannot tolerate other women who want to be women, and wives, and mothers… is inexplicable.

Except that they are committed, active soldiers in this corrosive Culture of Death cult.

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Please take a moment today and watch this tender music video. Three Kleenex for me.

Click: A Mother Like You

5-2-22

The Shroud of Turin is back in the news. New scientific tests and findings; new “expositions” – displaying of the actual cloth and exact replicas; 3-D formations; analyses of the cloth, even minerals and pollen found in the fibers.

Old mysteries, new debates; old debates, new mysteries.

A summary for those who have not heard of the Shroud or followed its occasional appearance in news stories. The lengthy piece of cloth (approximately 14.5 feet by 3.5 feet) is reputed to be the burial cloth of Jesus, or in any event a man who was laid upon the cloth which then was brought forward to cover the front of the body. That is, not wrapped like a mummy.

The Shroud was imputed to be that of Jesus because there is a faint yet detailed image of a man fitting the details of a body abused as described in Bible accounts.

Mysteries immediately present themselves:

Why have people thought the man was Jesus? First, the man’s features are that of a Palestinian Jew, with beard and hair in the style of Jesus’s time.

Further mysteries: there are apparent bloodstains and wounds and hematomas, and many of them. That the Shroud did not hold an average prisoner or random tortured criminal (besides the fact that the condemned would not have been afforded careful and honored burials in such shrouds) is another evident mystery: a great number of the evidences of the man of the Shroud correspond to Jesus’s Passion and death.

The mysteries of those bloodstains: Bloodstreams from thorns thrust on the head. A wound on the side (Jesus was pierced with a spear between the ribs). Other “stripes” – evidence of whippings and scourging as recorded in the Bible. Bruises, particularly on the face, correspond to the accounts of how Jesus was beaten.

There have been accusations and suspicions of forgery which skepticism is a reason the Shroud is frequently in the news: the wounds where spikes would have held the body on a cross are through the wrists, not hands. For centuries, Christians traditionally assumed that nails pieced Jesus’s hands – which is only the case in a general or poetic sense, but not by correct anatomy. Relatively recently, researchers nailed corpses to crosses; through the hands, the body’s weight ripped through the hands and the bodies fell. But because the wrist has many bones, the bodies were upheld. The man of the Shroud shows nail wounds through the wrists. Ancient forgers, if there were, did not depict that; innumerable artists  of ancient times depicted the crucified Jesus with nails or scars in the hands.

The biggest mystery is the image itself. It is faint; it shows a man as described in the Gospels, brutalized and naked. Through the centuries, people wondered, however, why the image appeared in sepia tones and “almost” real. But somehow “backwards” or reversed. Why? When the Shroud was first photographed in the late 1890s, its photographic negatives startled the world: HERE was a virtual photograph of a man fitting the Bible’s descriptions.

A mystery: the Shroud was a virtual photographic negative! What? Why? How?

Books have been written, and will be; but I will try to condense and summarize the facts, doubts, proofs, tests, and… mysteries. Ownership of the Shroud could be traced back only to about 1300. It was either forged then, or, as claimed, was hidden, cherished, then kept from Moslem invaders of churches in Turkey that claimed to possess such a relic.

How was the image made? It is not of paint or dyes; the image does not permeate the cloth; and (years before the atomic age) the idea was advanced that at the moment of Resurrection, a supernatural burst of some sort scorched the Shroud, transferring the image we see.

There are strange patches on it today. They were sewn when a fire occurred in a church where it was housed centuries ago, and its silver reliquary melted and burned in the folded cloth. Speaking of its being folded, the Shroud might explain the mystery of “Veronica’s Veil,” an ancient legend of a cloth that mysteriously took on the face of Jesus when a sympathetic woman wiped his sweat as the cross was carried to Golgotha. The Shroud in ancient times evidently was displayed in folded form, showing only Jesus’s face… perhaps inspiring that legend.

So the Shroud evidently was seen and venerated for decades after the Resurrection… went missing through persecution and wars… and for a thousand years has been traced in castles and churches, now residing in a basilica in Turin, Italy.

Skeptics have demanded proofs; and even the Vatican is neutral about its authenticity. Historians, doctors, experts in geography, agronomy, fabric analysis, and forensic science have debated. On both sides. Mysteries arise and are stoked: disagreements on the types of cloth weaves… the explanation for pollens on the Shroud from the area around Jerusalem (that is, not in a European forger’s studio)… measurements of the anatomy of the man of the Shroud… explanations for the absence of paints and the presence of blood serum. And so forth.

Back in the 1970s, when many discoveries were made and hotly debated, I became very interested in the Shroud, and researched all I could. I acquired rare publications from the 1890s, when the world became curious; I purchased documentary materials and even delivered lectures with a slide show. “The Mysteries of the Shroud.”

The church’s handlers allowed for a small portion of the Shroud to be cut, and undergo Carbon-14 dating analysis… whose conclusion (without explaining the manner of the image’s transfer and other mysteries) was that the Shroud was about a thousand years old, not 2000 years. Yet mysteries were compelling.

For instance, new technology has enabled the formation of 3-D models based on scans of the image on the Shroud. I was present at its display – a perfectly formed body of a man, every aspect in perfect proportions. Imagery even identified details on the coins placed on the body’s eyes… but that are disputed by others. Pollen, tiny seeds, the fabric composition, so much more, was explained… or explained away.

Meanwhile, Carbon-Dating has been found often to be unreliable, and easily contaminated. Some mysteries might have been answered this week, from a new technology that has dated the Shroud as from the time, and place, of Jesus’s life. Specifically, almost an exact match with fabrics from the siege of Masada, 74-55 B.C., in Israel.

“Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering,” or WAXS, measures the natural aging of flax cellulose. A scientist from Bari, Italy, described its superiority to carbon-14 spectrology: “Molds and bacteria, colonizing textile fibers, and dirt or carbon-containing minerals, such as limestone, adhering to them, in the empty spaces between the fibers that at a microscopic level represent about 50 per cent of the volume, can be so difficult to completely eliminate in the sample cleaning phase, which can distort the dating.”

As I said above, we have old mysteries, new debates; and old debates, new mysteries.

I invite you to think about the mysteries as much as about the Shroud, compelling as that is. Whether old or half-old, authentic or forgery, plausible or impossible… it is a matter of faith. And what is that “matter” of faith? – only something that can excite our curiosity and engage our interest.

At best – and I write as someone who is quite persuaded that this actually held the body of Jesus Christ – the Shroud is a relic. An object. As a relic, let it not persuade you (as relics have, sadly, throughout history, persuaded people) that it is holy; that it can save your soul; that it can heal you; that you should venerate or pray to it.

I have been to many sites in Europe where relics are housed and displayed: fingers of saints; locks of hair; skulls of martyrs. A favorite church near my favorite hotel in Rome, the Basilica of St-Paul-Outside-the-Wall, as it is known, has a wall of boxes and shelves with many of these “holy objects.” If all the “pieces of the True Cross” in European churches were put together, it would look like a redwood forest…

If I am dismissive, why have I pursued and maintain an interest in the Shroud? Very simply, because it is a graphic display, miraculously detailed, of what our Savior endured for us. It illustrates how He was tortured. It reveals everything He experienced. It documents, life-sized, every detail of humiliation, rejection, suffering. Eyes closed, somehow at peace – released – it visually explains what He allowed Himself to go through…

… to suffer and die as a substitute for the punishments we deserve as sinners. I cry when I think about what Jesus did for us; I cry when I look into the face of the Man of the Shroud. I rejoice that it exists – to remind me of the Cross and what He did for us.

I believe the Shroud survived to be that Holy Reminder for us. It explains what the Bible’s words tell. A Forgery? If so, why, then, didn’t forgers manufacture dozens of fake shrouds, instead of only one? Skeptics says that the image on the Shroud must have been “borrowed” from the way Byzantine artists depicted Christ – meanwhile never considering that, on the contrary, those countless painters depicted Jesus according to what they saw on the Shroud. Mysteries, yeah.

The real mystery? To me, it is that people can keep themselves from being moved by the story of His death on the Cross. And it is a mystery that people venerate relics instead of the Truth behind them.

In these days between the observances of the Resurrection and Jesus’s Ascension to Heaven, contemplate what is not a mystery – that the Creator of the Universe loved you so much that He sent His Son to live among humankind to suffer like this, and miraculously rise to life again. And all of which we can understand more powerfully through the Shroud. It is, literally, the Message of the Cross.

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Click: Rise Again