Not many of us are familiar with or even have heard of the “Veil of Manoppello”, a piece of “sea silk” that bears what is believed to be the Holy Face of the Risen Christ. Perhaps a visit to Bagumbayan Taguig City one of these days could introduce us to it. A replica of “Holy Face of Manoppello” was enshrined at the Sagrada Familia Parish in Bagumbayan, Taguig City last September 14, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The replica, housed in its own chapel, is a special gift from the Rector of the Basilica of Volto Santo in Manoppello and Mrs. Daisy Neves of Seattle, USA, to the Philippines and the Christian community of Bagumbayan, “a gift from the Risen Lord in order to help us persevere in believing”, says Fr. Danny Flores, Sagrada Familia parish priest who is “on loan” from Rome.
Allow us to lend this space to the story told of the Veil of
Manoppello and handed down to this column by Fr. Flores: The account of the
resurrection of the Lord (Jn. 20: 1-9) narrates that inside the empty tomb
where Jesus was laid down, several burial clothes were found including the
cloth that covered Jesus’ head. John entered the tomb after Peter; the former firmly
fixed his eyes on the cloth. “He saw and believed” that indeed Jesus is Risen
from the dead.
According to the Jewish
tradition, several clothes were used in the burial customs of the Jews. Insofar
as Jesus was regarded as Rabbi whose teaching came from above, the most solemn
of all the burial clothes were used to bury his body. These clothes that
covered the dead body of Jesus were the ‘sindon
munda of Joseph of Arimathea’, ‘sudarium
of Aachen’, ‘shroud of Turin’, ‘coif of Cahors’, ‘sudarium of Oviedo’ and the ‘veil
of Manoppello’. Famous among these burial clothes are the four-meter linen
cloth used to wrap the whole body of the dead Jesus commonly known as the ‘shroud of Turin’, the towel used to
absorb the blood and water coming out from the nose and mouth of Jesus while
being brought down from the cross, known as the ‘sudarium of Oviedo’ and the marine byssus that was placed over the
head of Jesus as the last homage to the divine King, or the so-called ‘veil of Jerusalem’, otherwise known as
the ‘Veil of Veronica’ enshrined
today in the Basilica del Volto Santo a Manoppello
in Italy.
St. John found the ‘veil of
Jerusalem’, which covered the face of Jesus while in the tomb; he saw on it
the ‘imprinted image of the face of the
Risen Lord’ and after observing it, he believed that in fact the Lord Jesus
Christ is alive.
The tradition says that during the apostolic times, all the burial
clothes, already considered relics of the ‘Suffering, Dead and Risen Lord’,
were taken care of by His Holy Mother and were later entrusted to some of the
Apostles. These relics were then transferred in different places and were
entrusted to various persons for safekeeping and veneration until, compelled by
events and various circumstances in the history of the early Christian
communities, those clothes were handed over to some civil and religious
authorities in different countries and in various manners.
The ‘Veil of Jerusalem’
underwent the same fate. It journeyed from Jerusalem (c. 33-40? AD) to Edessa
(now Syria) between c. 40-50 where it was called the ‘mandylion of Edessa’; then, from Edessa to Kamulia (Urfa, Turkey) in
392 (‘veil of Camulia’) down to
Constantinople in the year 574 where it was kept until the siege of the city.
In Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) like in Kamulia, the veil was venerated
as an ‘acheiropoietos’ because of its
mysterious origin, that is, an image ‘not
painted by human hands’. It was then brought to Rome in c. 705 in St. John
Lateran Apostolic Palace and venerated at the chapel of the ‘Sancta Sanctorum’ (Church of St.
Lawrence in Palatio in Scala Santa) and later on was brought to
St. Peter’s Basilica in 1200 and kept at the chapel of the Veronica until the
siege of Rome on May 6, 1527. In Rome the ‘acheiropetos’
was successively called the ‘Veil of
Veronica’ or simply ‘Veronica’.
It
is interesting to know the meaning of the word ‘veronica’; a word that was coined in order to express the mystery
of the veil. Veronica is the combination of two words: the Latin ‘vera’
meaning ‘true’ and the Greek ‘eikona’ meaning
‘image’, which put together form a single word ‘veraicon’ or ‘veronica’. The veil, therefore, is the ‘true image’ of the face of the Risen
Lord. In fact, the image of the ‘just
awakened Christ’ was impressed onto
the marine byssus at the very first moment of the resurrection. This special
kind of woven mussel silk, the costliest fabric in the ancient world known as
byssus, captured and immortalized the very first instance when the Lord Jesus
takes back the life He himself offered by dying on the cross.
To
protect the precious relic of the Resurrection of the Lord during the sack of
Rome, the ‘Veil of Veronica’ was brought to a small town of Manoppello (c. 1506; 1608) in the
central part of Italy in the region of Abruzzo. From then onward until today it
is kept and venerated by the faithful of the city as the ‘Volto Santo di Manoppello’ or the ‘Holy Face of Manoppello’.
Pope
Emeritus Benedict XVI was the first Roman Pontiff to visit the Shrine and
venerate the ‘Holy Face of Manoppello’ on September 1, 2006. After
contemplating the human face of God imprinted on the Veil of Manoppello, it had
become the trademark of his pontificate.
In fact, in January 2013 he mentioned the ‘face of God’ nineteen times during
the public audience and in his last public audience prior to his resignation he
pronounced it again for twenty-five times; thereby, sealing his pontificate
with the “Human Face of God”. Pope
Benedict’s address then to the pilgrims on that historic visit may as well be
an invitation to us to gaze on the Holy Face: “As the Psalms say, we are all
‘seeking the face of the Lord.’
And this is also the meaning of my visit. Let us seek together to know the Face of the Lord even
better, and in the Face of the Lord let us find this impetus of love and peace
which also reveals to us the path of our life.”
