The picture that most entrances me is not the one that President Barack Obama refuses to release. It’s a picture that the entire world will never look for or demand, and it is one that mercifully will never be worn on T-shirts.
The picture that goes straight to the human heart comes from what is surely the world’s most fascinating Lost and Found story as written by Paul Badde in The Face of God; The Rediscovery of the True Face of Jesus on the Holy Face of Manoppello.
Since reading the book over Easter, I have searched the Internet looking for more pictures of the haunting Holy Face of Manoppello.
In all of my years nothing has so impressed me as the picture of the image brought into public conscience by Badde’s “Rediscovery of the True Face of Jesus”.
Just laying eyes on the picture of the image goes straight to the human soul, and there will be some who will spend the rest of their days dreaming of one day being able to stand before the image itself in faraway Manoppello.
The Face of God is no mere fiction. It is a mesmerizing account, written by a renowned journalist and historian who has been an editor of the German newspaper Die Welt since 2000, first as the Jerusalem correspondent, and now as the Vatican correspondent in Rome.
Working with Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J., one of the world’s best-known experts on Christian art, and Sister Blandina Paschalis Schlömer, O.C.S.O, a Trappestine nun who moved to Manoppello to live as a hermit devoting her life to the image, Badde takes his readers down a long, lonely trail in a search that will hold the reader captive long after finishing the last page.
Readers follow Badde down the cobbled streets of remote Italian towns and imagine the cobwebs being blown off library tomes all but lost through time. They come to know the real life characters the author meets along the way.
In describing Fr. Pfeiffer Badde writes, “I knew that for him, the Holy Face of Manoppello was the model for absolutely all images of Christ, the root of a genealogical tree of all Christian representations of the Son of God.”
It was the never-give-up Sister Blandina who discovered “when you place the Face from the Shroud of Turin on top of that of Manoppello, we have to admit that the image on the sudarium and that on the shroud originated at the same time.”
The characters of both Fr. Pfeiffer and Sr. Blandina are drawn out gently through Badde’s always intuitive pen.
“That the image entirely and completely corresponded in all proportions and measure, had often been asserted in Italy for some time already; but no one had ever shouted it from the rooftops as loudly as Sister Blandina,” wrote Badde. “Without her, this book would not exist.”
One can almost imagine hearing without straining what would be the delightful laugh of Sr. Blandina, which must sound something like the tinkling of the high notes of a well-tuned piano.
Following the search for the story of The Face of God dispatched Badde to both a remote ancient town in the Abruzzo mountains and to deep corners holding the innermost secrets of the Vatican. Chair-bound readers are sent along Internet trails searching centuries-old paintings of Christ by long ago masters.
Yearnings, always there, are newly awakened in The Face of God.
The picture of ‘Merciful Jesus’ in accordance with the vision of Saint Faustina of Poland is a large painting in the Nazarene style, venerated to the present day in the convent chapel at Cracow-Lagiewniki. And yet “the Christ is nonetheless quite amazingly like the Volto Santo of Manoppello. Perhaps more like it than any other picture,” says the author.
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Uniquely the Holy Face of Manoppello is observed on mussel silk or byssus also known as sea silk, the costliest fabric in the ancient world.
So thorough and passionate was Badde in his epic quest that he found and brought to Manoppello, Chiara Vigo, “truly the only surviving weaver of byssus in the whole world.”
The sudarium (sweat cloth) of Manoppello and the Turin Shroud are the only true images of the Face of Jesus and are known as acheiropoieta--that is, not made by human hands.
Deep in the Abruzzos, the story of the image is as Badde describes, “the discovery of many discoveries.”
Tracing back through Father Time to unlock the age old mysteries of how the Face of God was rediscovered in a remote Italian village nestled in the mountains would take the infinite patience and devotion of a best-selling journalist and historian, and it did.
Badde’s description of the first time he gazed upon the Holy Face of Manoppello is enthralling...and will hold enrapt any curious Christian.
This in the author’s own words after describing the image of “a bearded man with sidelocks, who had been struck on his slim nose; his right cheek was swollen, and part of his beard had been torn out”:
”I rested my head against the glass, the way I had often done against train windows while on a journey, while the earth was flying past outside, or as I still did sometimes when a plane was taking off or landing. I gazed at the smaller window of the monstrance behind and now a living face was looking at me from it.
“There was an inexplicable peace in his wide-open eyes. Bafflement, amazement, astonishment, too; and a mild pity. No pain, no anger, and no curse on his lips. It looked like the face of a man who was just waking from sleep. The shadows around his eyes and the shades of light on his eyelids were more finely drawn than Leonardo da Vinci could have painted....If one had to decide what sound was on his lips, they were making a soft “Ah”...A living face was looking at me and he was looking into my eyes as if I were an old acquaintance.”
Less than a year after the author held in his hands ‘the first copy of this book, fresh from the printer (on September 23, 2000), Pope Benedict XVI, on September 1, 2006, visited the shrine of the Holy Face in Manoppello by helicopter.”
“This,” as the author says , “was a turning point in the story of the Holy Face , after which there was no turning back.”
We live in a world where it seems the Face of God is overshadowed by a myriad of so many lesser things. Not everybody will read the Paul Badde’s compelling The Face of God.
It doesn’t really matter. For those with an open heart, just seeing a picture of the image of the Holy Face of Manoppello are destined to remember it forever.
The Face of God; The Rediscovery of the True Face of Jesus on the Holy Face of Manoppello
Judi McLeod——Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
The picture that most entrances me is not the one that President Barack Obama refuses to release. It’s a picture that the entire world will never look for or demand, and it is one that mercifully will never be worn on T-shirts.
The picture that goes straight to the human heart comes from what is surely the world’s most fascinating Lost and Found story as written by Paul Badde in The Face of God; The Rediscovery of the True Face of Jesus on the Holy Face of Manoppello.
Since reading the book over Easter, I have searched the Internet looking for more pictures of the haunting Holy Face of Manoppello.
In all of my years nothing has so impressed me as the picture of the image brought into public conscience by Badde’s “Rediscovery of the True Face of Jesus”.
