by
Damien F. Mackey
Reading through, this Lent and Easter,
by Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI,
I was struck by his marvellous
discussion of
the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ –
“a divine action in
history and nature
that changed history
and nature in a radical way”.
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“What we have here
is probably a new branch of quantum
physics
that will tell us
new findings about our universe.”
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It reminded
me, too, of the startling reality of the Shroud of Turin, that believers think
is an actual testimony to the Resurrection, and that some scientifically-minded
scholars have argued has so seriously challenged the boundaries of conventional
science as to demand new scientific paradigms. Like the Resurrection, that has,
in the words of Benedict, “changed history and nature in a radical way”. One of
these scientists is Dame Isabel Piczek, a particle physicist and monumental
artist of international repute. Whilst she believes that: “As a spiritual
phenomenon the Shroud should be left to theology to discuss,” she will go on to
say: “But the bodily resurrection, the Shroud of Turin and the whole
circumstance of the image on the Shroud involves matter, although matter seen
in a startlingly different way. What we have here is probably a new branch of quantum physics that
will tell us new findings about our universe.” (http://www.northernway.org/weblog/?p=32
emphasis added).
The article
continues:
Dame
Piczek thinks that the Shroud image was created in an infinitesimally small
fraction of a second. But, she says, the image may have been created by a
complex process arising as Christ’s body passed from one form of existence into
another. She notes that it may be “Something akin to the Big Bang, but at the
opposite end of the creation continuum — a portal opens into a new science and
eventually into a new form of human existence.”
[End of
quote]
As one
commentator remarked: "... the door between science and faith is not
closed ...".
I also
recommend a terrific book on the Shroud by Jerome Corsi, “The Shroud Codex”. It
is fiction, but it explores the idea that cutting edge quantum physics may be
pointing in the direction of such a new dimension as argued by Dame Piczek and
by Pope Benedict, who in turn has written in Jesus of Nazareth: “Christ’s Resurrection . . . is
a historical event that nevertheless bursts open the dimensions of history and
transcends it. Perhaps we may draw upon analogical language here . . . [and
think of] the Resurrection as something akin to a radical “evolutionary leap,”
in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed,
matter itself is remolded into a new type of reality”.
We read in a
review of Corsi’s book (http://www.wnd.com/2010/04/142581/#yvJbrDEHF7l):
There’s just one problem with Dan Brown’s
mega-blockbusters “Angels and Demons” and especially “The Da Vinci Code.”
Though they’re entertaining, superbly crafted stories, underneath it all
there’s always this not-so-subtle intent to inject doubt into believers and
nudge them toward the soulless, cynical sophistication of modernity.
Now here comes No. 1 New York Times best-selling author
Jerome Corsi with a novel – his first fiction effort – that combines the
Vatican, particle physics, atheism, the Shroud of Turin, what appear to be
dramatic supernatural events and much more, all into a stunning mystery of
science and faith.
…. But the difference is that Corsi is taking the reader
in the opposite direction than Dan Brown – toward faith, rather than away from
it".
[End of
quote]
Now, thanks to the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ, our own immortal soul “can find its “space,” its
“bodiliness”,” Benedict continues:
The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belongs to the sphere of the
divine and eternal. From now on, as Tertullian once said, “spirit and blood”
have a place within God. . . . Even if man by his nature is created for
immortality, it is only now that the place exists in which his immortal soul
can find its “space,” its “bodiliness,” in which immortality takes on its
meaning as communion with God and with the whole of reconciled mankind. This is
what is meant by those passages in Saint Paul’s prison letters (cf. Colossians
1.12–23 and Ephesians 1. 3–23) that speak of the cosmic body of Christ,
indicating thereby that Christ’s transformed body is also the place where men
enter into communion with God and with one another and are therefore able to
live definitively in the fullness of indestructible life. . . . [Thus] Jesus’s
Resurrection was not just about some deceased individual coming back to life at
a certain point. . . . [An] ontological leap occurred, one that touches being
as such, opening up a dimension that affects us all, creating for all of us a
new space of life, a new space of being in union with God.
[End of
quote]
“[An] ontological leap occurred”. Dame Piczek, writing along similar
lines, boldly claims that “we have nothing less in the tomb of Christ than the beginning of a new
Universe.”
In 2004,
Dame Piczek, working independently made a discovery that could change
everything we think we know about the world we live in. Time, space and energy
apparently interact in a way never before predicted. This discovery soon
received support from two completely independent sources: a group of laser
scientists and a former U.S. Apollo astronaut. According to some observers,
this new information could ignite a scientific revolution, or perhaps even
provide something much more important to mankind . . . like the secrets of life
itself . . . perhaps even eternal life.
Dame
Piczek, was fascinated by the total lack of distortion on the Shroud image, a
physical impossibility if the body had been lying on solid rock. She created a
full-sized, three-dimensional reproduction of the body and discovered what she
believes to be a true “event horizon,” or, a moment when all the laws of
physics change drastically.
“Two
things are immediately obvious; the image-forming action at a distance had
‘nothing to do with gravity’ . . . and the new field does not have an
anti-field, otherwise the two images would not show the same exact system,”
says Dame Piczek. “Summarizing all of these qualities, the Shroud puts us in
the realm of raw creation . . . we have nothing less in the tomb of Christ than
the beginning of a new Universe.”
