The Holy Veil of Manoppello: The Human Face of God by Paul Badde
The horrific 1915 earthquake that levelled tiny Manoppello, Italy, brought forth from the local church’s rubble one of Christendom’s long-lost, but most precious relics: the small cloth that lay on Jesus’s face in the tomb.
Saint John speaks of it in his Gospel: “When Peter went into the tomb, he saw linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” Tradition says that Our Lady herself laid this cloth on His face before He was wrapped in His shroud for burial.
This small veil — now known as the Holy Face of Manoppello — absorbed the very first new breath of the Risen Christ . . . and at that same instant had imprinted on itself, miraculously, a vivid image of the now-resurrected Jesus.
Modern scholars have confirmed that this image corresponds perfectly in all its measurements to the face of the dead Christ on the more famous Shroud of Turin.
Unlike the Shroud, however, the Holy Face of Manoppello shows not the grim visage of a dead man with eyes closed, but the lively face of the living Christ, His eyes wide open, piercing us with their gaze.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI made a pilgrimage to Manoppello to pray before this image. In the decade since then, tens of thousands of other pilgrims have followed in the Pope’s footsteps, making the trek to central Italy to meet Jesus face-to-face.
Now, thanks to author Paul Badde you can learn of the loss and recovery of this precious relic. Better yet, by means of the dozens of color pictures in this book, you, too, can encounter this miraculous cloth, and finally gaze reverently on the face of the living Christ Himself!
Paperback, 112 pages.
ISBN: 9781622826483
The Roman Catacombs: A History of the Christian City Beneath Pagan Rome by Rev. James Spencer Northcote
Enter into the shadows of the Roman catacombs where early Christians attended Mass and hid in fear from Roman soldiers seeking their death for refusing to renounce the Christian Faith.
You’ll read dramatic acts of faith and courage as Fr. James Spencer Northcote, the world-renowned 19th-century expert on the catacombs, relates the intense belowground life of the catacombs.
For over three centuries, Christians buried their dead in often elaborate crypts hollowed out for them underground by fossors — designated diggers whose status was just below that of deacons and priests.
With scores of maps and illustrations in these pages, you’ll see that the architecture of many crypts was as elaborate as buildings above-ground, creating under the streets and fields of Rome a second-city—indeed, a Christian city in the very heart of pagan Rome—graced with broad underground tunnels and large rooms where assemblies could be held.
In good times and in bad, during peace and during persecutions, the catacombs were central to the vibrant life of the early Church, whose history is here retold from its creation to its eventual decline, loss, and then, hundreds of years later, its rediscovery.
Paperback, 152 pages.
ISBN: 9781622823796