I must admit I had no idea about this one. Pretty amazing.
This is the kind of rabbit hole I love jumping into.
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May 3, 2022 at 12:18 pm
There are problems with this. For one thing, the Shroud of Turin was already known and indeed famous by the time the first painting of the Divine Mercy Image was made. It has indeed been suggested that the Shroud of Turin may have shaped the traditional depictions of Christ for the past 2000 years. If an artist today were to produce a painting of Alexander the Great and it turned out to be remarkably similar to the depiction in the mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, that might be more than coincidence, but it would be much less than a miracle.
The second problem is that the painting was not the vision, nor was it even produced by the visionary; it was painted under the verbal instructions of St. Faustina. Even if the private revelation is authentic — WHICH WE ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO BELIEVE — the painting is not revelation in any sense. It is something more akin to Mel Gibson’s movie THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST; it is a work of art based in revelation.
Perhaps a third objection is in order. I heard a homily once that claimed (based on a source I have not been able to locate) that St. Francis supposedly once encountered the devil disguised as Christ. St. Francis was not fooled for an instant and immediately began reproaching the devil. The devil then admitted to the deception, but he asked how St. Francis had recognized him. “You don’t have the nail marks!” the saint replied. Neither does the Divine Mercy Image. Well, mine does, because after that homily I added them with a Sharpie.
May 11, 2022 at 4:11 am
You say that the Divine Mercy image of Christ has no nail marks. It does have the nail marks . One hand is bent inwards you cannot see inside and the other one is visible from the front of the hand which has a bloody hole in it. Then there are the two streams of white and red coming out of His heart.
May 11, 2022 at 4:40 am
Its not true, that the Divine Mercy Image doesen´t have the nail marks: https://www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/lesson-three-image-divine-mercy
January 1, 2023 at 3:58 pm
Sister Faustina was never satisfied with the original painting. The artist, Eugene Kazimierowski was an atheist. A bit of a grey area in this discussion.
May 4, 2022 at 9:38 am
” It has indeed been suggested that the Shroud of Turin may have shaped the traditional depictions of Christ for the past 2000 years.”
Without the advent of photography in the late 19th century the image on the cloth was at best very vague and not at all clearly seen. There really was nothing there for artists over the centuries to copy. It was only after the photographer viewed his photographic plates that the image became clearer. There is no way that I can see that it shaped the traditional depictions of Christ for 2000 years as blurry as the image was before photography.
” it was painted under the verbal instructions of St. Faustina.”
True and with centuries of art depicting Christ it is probable that the painted image of Divine Mercy by the artist was influenced by centuries of artist renderings of what they thought Christ looked like as well as St. Faustina’s instructions. But when superimposed over the shroud it was said there was a 1 to 1 aspect of both images being of the same person. 1 to 1? How likely is that to happen? Besides do we know that the artist had access to the Shroud and make measurements in order to duplicate the image of Divine Mercy so that it is compatible with the Shroud of Turin? I doubt very much that the artist or any artist would have been given permission and allowed to handle the Shroud after the Church had protected it for thousands of years.
I’m not saying everything meshes but I do believe the Shroud is authentic and the possibilities that the video offers are not so far fetched. I dare say they are more easily believed than a claimed homily about St. Francis.
May 4, 2022 at 10:40 am
The “2000 year” claim was in a book I have in a box somewhere. I don’t know it’s true, but then, I don’t KNOW that the Shroud is 2000 years old. It seems likely, and it seems likely to be what it seems to be, but it is not entirely certain. At any rate, the claim is out there, and it is no less plausible than the claim made in the original post.
Regardless, “the advent of photography in the late[?] 19th century” was before the Divine Mercy Image was painted.
“How likely is that to happen?” The other question is, “How likely is it to be true?” Or more true, I should say, than comparing the Divine Mercy Image with a picture of Johnny Depp or Robert Downey, Jr. Human faces tend to look roughly alike, so the odds of Johnny Depp’s picture lining up pretty well are very good. “But not exactly!” you might object. Maybe not, but (1) the claim of a 1 to 1 correspondence is vague at best and (2) it lacks precision. Do the two images match better than the DNA of a human to the DNA of a chimpanzee, which means 98.8% identical? Do they match better than my DNA matches that of Lebron James, which means 99.9% identical? And then there’s the matter of correcting for scale at the very least, which introduces the question of what OTHER massaging of data has taken place.
Sorry, this has too strong a whiff of “the Torah Code” and “Joshua’s Long Day”.
May 12, 2022 at 12:43 pm
In a live presentation I heard by Fr. Chris Alar MIC at the Shrine In Stockbridge, the number stated was greater than 99% point to point correspondence between the images of both faces (he may even have said 99.9%).
He said that this degree of point to point correspondence is not achievable even by tracing by hand.
“1 to 1” essentially means 100% correspondence, which is not unreasonable as a rounding up from greater than 99%.
May 12, 2022 at 1:41 pm
I heard a live presentation by Fr. Chris Alar at the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass. The point to point matching between the two faces is greater than 99%; he quoted additional significant figures (decimal places) that I don’t remember, maybe 99.9%. He reported that this degree of point to point matching cannot be achieved by the most careful tracing by hand. So 1 to 1 (or 100%) correspondence is not an unreasonable descriptor.
As for the scale, the images needed to be scaled to each other, but this is a standard practice for comparing similarity of images and takes nothing away from the point to point matching of all the facial features.
As for the wounds, they appear on various versions of the image. The original was painted by Eugene Kazimirowski, who normally painted still lifes and not persons. Further, St. Faustina focused on getting the face of Jesus right (and was ultimately disappointed) with her limited visits permitted by her superior and apparently left the rest of the painting to the artist’s execution.
May 4, 2022 at 11:46 am
Whether the shroud IS the true Shroud of Christ or not we are free to believe as we wish. We weigh the evidence presented. Some reject it out of hand and some of us question it but keep an open mind. If in the end it is found that the shroud is fake it won’t matter to me because my faith is in Christ and not in a death shroud. Some of the apostles and disciples had questions and their faith and reason tested about the resurrection. They kept an open mind except one apostle that we know of: Thomas.