The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [90]
Castle could see that Anne had hit on an important point. “What do you think it means?” he asked her.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Anne answered. “But I think it must have something to do with what Dr. Silver told us at Princeton.”
“What do you mean?” Castle pressed again.
“I think it has to do with time,” she explained. “My brother told me he felt his mission was to decipher the message of the Shroud for the world. Maybe he’s showing us that time does not necessarily happen like we experience it. Maybe the events of Christ’s passion and death are all still happening somehow, as if those moments never ended. If that were so, my brother is able to go back and key into this moment or that moment of Christ’s torture and death, but he doesn’t necessarily have to do so in the sequence the events were seen to have followed some two thousand years ago.”
“It’s an interesting idea,” Castle said.
“I mean, think about it,” Anne said. “In a way, Christ’s death preceded his scourging and crowning with thorns.”
Castle struggled to follow this point. “I was following you up to now, but you just lost me.”
Anne began to explain. “It’s about how the tree defines the seed. Father Middagh has just explained that the way the ancient Romans crucified people depended on how the executioners wanted the crucified man to die. We just heard that the Romans scourged Christ to within an inch of his life because the Sabbath was approaching and Christ had to die quickly on the cross, in order to comply with the rules of the Jews that Christ’s body had to be buried by sundown Friday. So, in that regard, the death of Christ was a reality that even two thousand years ago preceded his scourging at the pillar and determined exactly how he was crucified—whether or not he would have a seat to rest on and a footrest, for instance.”
“There’s another point here,” Morelli said, picking up on the theme. “In a way, the Shroud of Turin is a book. Examining the wounds of the man in the Shroud gives us clues as to exactly how he was punished and killed. We read motivations into the crown of thorns, namely that Christ was mocked as the supposed King of the Jews, a concept the Roman centurions thought laughable. Otherwise there would have been no point in the mock crown designed to torment Christ.”
“My brother continues to use the word codex to describe the Shroud,” Anne said. “He said the Shroud was a codex, a secret message that he intended to decipher. My brother also said he never quit being a physicist and that this was the crowning experiment of his life. What my brother researched was time. Like Dr. Silver told us, my brother, when he was at the Institute for Advanced Study, was working out advanced particle physics equations in order to prove we live in a universe that may involve ten or more dimensions, not just the four dimensions we think we live in. The point is that time is not as we experience it every day, not a logical progression from birth to death, from infancy to old age—not a straight line at all.”
Just then, Castle’s cell phone went off, interrupting the meeting.
Castle took the call. Archbishop Duncan was on the other end of the line.
“The pope would like to talk with you,” Duncan said simply.
This did not entirely take Castle by surprise, not after the worldwide attention Fernando Ferrar’s video broadcast had received. “Okay, when?”
“At one P.M. today,” Duncan said. “If you are available, my office will arrange a three-way conference call with the Vatican, to include you and me with the pope.”
“That will work,” Castle said. “I want you to call me on my private landline in my office.”
“Will do,” Duncan agreed.
“Unfortunately, this meeting is over,” Castle announced to the group in the conference room. “That was Archbishop Duncan and we’ve got an important conference call with the pope at one P.M. today.”
“Should we wait to go to the hospital with you?” Anne asked.
“No,” Castle said. “You go ahead.