Dear Rev. Know it all

Could you comment on the homily given by a "Catholic" priest in Australia in which he states: "It is almost unbelievable that we are required, in an age of scientific understanding to submit our intellects to a literal belief in a bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus into heaven." Speaking of Resurrection and Ascension, my understanding is that there are only two human bodies in Heaven. One belongs to Jesus and the other belongs to Mary. However, what happened to the body of Elijah? The Bible states that when confronted by his enemies, he was brought up to Heaven in a Chariot of flames. Also, this is the Old Testament, I thought the doors of Heaven were closed until Jesus???  I am quite confused.

Thank you,

Bill Leever 

Dear Bill

The Bard wisely tells us in his play Hamlet, that “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  The preacher of whom you speak has the soul of an appliance salesman and not the soul of a poet (no offense intended to appliance salesmen, a noble, if not poetic,  profession). Fr. Fitzpatrick of St. Mary’s in Brisbane, Australia said in his homily of May 24, 2009, “It is almost unbelievable that we are required, in an age of scientific understanding to submit our intellects to a literal belief in a bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus into heaven."  He then goes on to discuss something about quantum mechanics demanding flexibility. If Fr. Fitzpatrick is discussing quantum physics, I wonder if he is keeping with people like Max Tegmark and the late Hugh Everett and their theories of “multiverse” reality. It seems there may be an infinite number of parallel universes and an infinite numbers of you’s and me’s working out every possibility that exists. Go figure. I find it much easier to visualize winged souls plucking harps on clouds than unlimited multiverses, and God forbid, multiple me’s. (google all this. I’m not making it up) Fr, Fitzpatrick finishes with a discussion of breathing and the Hebrew name of God and the nature of mystical perception “The great mystics in all religions know that their god could not be captured in any form of words.” I have no idea what he is talking about. I wonder what he means by “literal” and trying to “capture god.”  I have never tried to capture God. I’ve always thought the whole thing was about loving God and being loved by Him.

There is an interesting book by Dr. Gilbert Lavoie titled “Resurrected.” It discusses the Shroud of Turin as more than the burial cloth of Christ. (If you have been keeping up, you will know that the Shroud of Turin is back. It seems that the carbon test that debunked it were performed on a medieval repair patch. The Shroud of Turin itself has never been carbon dated) Anyway, Dr. Lavoie’s book makes the point that the blood stains on the cloth are made by contact with dead body. They don’t quite match up with the burn marks that make up the image. The two kinds of images were formed by entirely different processes. The second image really has nothing to do with contact with a dead body. It seems that blood stained the cloth first, then something happened to burn the very topmost  fibrils of the fibers of the cloth. The image is made by a faint scorch of fibrils less than the one tenth of the width of a human hair. The image does not penetrate the cloth. It does not even penetrate the to the fibers of the cloth. This delicate oxidation, which seems to have happened in less than a split second, creates the most haunting image of Christ in all the history of art and it lay hidden in an ancient cloth unable to be seen until the dawn of the twentieth century.

At the end of the 19^th century, when a picture was taken of the Shroud by the latest high tech gizmo, the camera, they were amazed! Information lay hidden in the Shroud that could not be decoded by medieval science. Then in the seventies, the latest technology, a VP8 image analyzer was aimed at the Shroud and, amazing! The Shroud contained information that was unavailable before the advanced technologies of the 1970's. Groovy!. Well, guess what! In the 2000's, working independently, Dr. Petrus Soons, an M.D. from Holland, and Dame Isabel Piczek a Hungarian particle physicist, discovered that there was information hidden in the Shroud, unavailable to earlier science, a quantum holograph!!!!  Dame Piczek explains the complicated physics behind the image on the Shroud: “As quantum time collapses to absolute zero (time stopped moving) in the tomb of Christ, the two event horizons (one stopping events from above and the other stopping the events from below at the moment of the zero time collapse) going through the body get infinitely close to each other and eliminate each other" (causing the image to print itself on the two sides of the Shroud.)  I have only the vaguest idea of what she is saying. It sounds scientific. Look it up on your own computer. You’ll be amazed. (Dr. Soons video presentation here.)

I saw the above mentioned holographic image at an exhibition at Notre Dame in Jerusalem, (not to be confused with Notre Dame, that hotbed of heathenism in Indiana.) I was astounded. The image of the man of the Shroud is completely independent of the cloth. It seems to exist in its own place, not located on a cloth or even on a background. My point is this. The Shroud has information in it that has anticipated the science of the 19th, 20^th and 21^st centuries. If there is some new invention in, say, the 23^rd century, that is if science has not sent us back to the stone age, or the if the Lord tarries yet a little, I imagine that the latest science will find information in the Shroud that has been there all along waiting for yet another “modern” era. Thinking of quantum holographs, and image analyzers and on and on makes me think that Hamlet was quite correct. “There is more, Fr. Fitzpatrick, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.”

This leads into your second question. If Mary and Jesus are bodily risen and ascended not to mention Elijah and even Enoch and perhaps Moses, where are they? They are where they have always been: in the mind, in the speaking of God. The book of Wisdom tell us that, God has made all things by His word.”  The first chapters of Genesis tell us that God spoke and all things came into being. The rabbis refine that idea. They hold that God spoke and speaks eternally. If He ever stopped saying “chair”, the chair you are sitting on would vanish, and if he ever stopped speaking you name, you would cease to be. The perfect, risen physicality of our Lord and our Blessed Mother, whatever physicality may ultimately prove to be, is held in the embrace of God. As for the question about the problem of the gates of heaven remaining closed until the time of Jesus, our Messiah, it must be remembered that, when one speak about the realities of heaven, what appears to be time as well as what appears to be space lose their meaning before the unbounded majesty and infinity of God, for whom all moments are now and all places are here. In other words, I wouldn’t worry about it. God’s got it covered. St. Paul says it better than Hamlet ever could. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it has not so much as occurred to the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1st Corinthians, 2:9)

I once had the privilege to say Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the very place of the tomb of Christ. I bent down to carry the Body and Blood of the risen Christ from inside the tomb and then stood in front of the low door of that empty earth quake shattered tomb, saying “Behold the Lamb of God.” I realized that He was risen, He is still risen. He has always risen and will always be risen, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, in every church where the Mass is celebrated and where, through the lips of unworthy priests, He speaks the words unendingly, “This is my Body, This is my Blood.”  He has risen! Truly, He has risen!

Yours,

Rev. Know-it-all