Have you heard about St. Denis? There is a legend that after he was beheaded, his body grabbed his head, tucked it under his arm, and walked several miles to the cemetery in which he wanted to be buried. Oh, and along the way, he continued preaching the Gospel and expressed forgiveness of his persecutors.
Alrighty then.
There are many such sensational stories passed down to us about various saints. A lot of them are from long ago, about saints we know little about. It’s easy to chalk them up as tall tales from an age where most people were illiterate and prone to superstition.
And maybe they are.
But sometimes modern science collides with these tall tales and reveals unexpected results.
Our family recently visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Perhaps a strange place for a shrine to honor an apparition that happened in Mexico over two hundred years before the United States came into existence, but Bishop Burke had his reasons.
As a review, in 1531, the Blessed Mother appeared four times to St. Juan Diego asking for a church to be built in her honor. The last time she appeared to him, on December 12, 1531, she arranged roses in his tilma, which he then took to the bishop. When he opened his cloak, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously present on the tilma. It sparked a tremendous conversion of native Mexicans to Catholicism.
It, too, comes across as an enchanting fairy tale, a useful fable that seems to contain more fantasy than fact.
But it’s the facts that confuse the matter…
🌵 The tilma is made of a material that should have decayed within a decade, and yet after nearly 500 years it’s still perfectly intact. And in the 1750s, a skeptical artist in Mexico City made an exact recreation of the tilma, keeping it enclosed in glass in the exact same environment and conditions as the original. Within seven years, his version rotted so badly it was removed from public display.
✨ In addition, the stars on Mary’s mantle are exactly as they would have appeared in Mexico on December 12, 1531. The pattern of the stars would place the constellation corona borealis (the crown) on her forehead, virgo (the virgin) over her heart, and leo (the lion—i.e. the Lion of Judah) over her womb.
🧨 For its first 115 years, the tilma was displayed without protective glass. This subjected it to soot, candle wax, incense, and touching. Over the years, it has survived nitric acid being spilled on it and even a bombing with dynamite, and yet it remains in near perfect condition.
👀 Under a microscope, you can see an old man (perhaps Juan Diego himself?) reflected in Mary’s eyes.
🌡️ And get this: no matter what the surrounding temperature is, the image always maintains the same temperature of 98.6 °F.
Some people think that faith and science are mutually exclusive. But the more we study things like the tilma and the Shroud of Turin and Eucharistic miracles, the more we see how wrong that is.
And yet, science can never replace faith altogether. Despite all the evidence that piles up around us, a quick internet search will find there are still plenty of skeptics who refuse to believe any of it.
It all serves to back up St. Thomas Aquinas, who said, “For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.”
Is it a requirement for me to believe that there once was a saint that carried his own severed head in his arms, preaching the gospel as he went?
No.
I only need to believe in a God for whom something like that is entirely possible.
References:
Leave a Reply