Sunday, April 05, 2009

So that`s where it was!

Hardly a day goes by in St Mary`s presbytery without the parish priest spending time hunting for something he`s lost. It`s usually the diary but not always. Last night I spent half an hour looking for my car key until I began to think where I`d last seen it and decided that the best place to look was in a pile of papers on a chair in the kitchen and there it was.
So I have a lot of sympathy for people who lose things. In today`s Times there is a story of how the Turin Shroud was lost for over a hundred years but recent research has now revealed where it was: the Templars had it. The Vatican is backing up the story in L`Osservatore Romano:
Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives, said the Shroud had disappeared in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface again until the middle of the fourteenth century. Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Dr Frale said its fate in those years had always puzzled historians.

However her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.
Now to relax after a long Palm Sunday.

3 comments:

Ben Trovato said...

My blog feed suggests that you have got 'Something on Archbishop Nichols.'

Now, where has that got to? With the car keys perhaps?

Fr Michael Brown said...

That post appeared briefly last night and then went back to the drawing board. It should be appearing later today.

The problem with the car key is that it doesn`t look like a key at all but rather a small black credit card. That`s how it can hide itself so well.

Ronan said...

Do you ever try praying to Saint Anthony? I'd estimate he has a 99% success rate for finding lost stuff, and when he doesn't come through with the goods, there's usually a good reason. I'm currently waiting for him to find my lost dissertation!