MATHEW, the first gospel book of the New Testament tells us that the Magi from the east came with their gifts to worship the child Jesus. From then on, gift-giving becomes a part of the Christian tradition as they commemorate His birth every year.
Just as the Christian world celebrates Christmas, a woman in Purok Lawaan of Barangay Don Aurelio Chicote in Gov. Generoso, Davao Oriental found a silhouette of a man’s face on the hedging of the canal. The image purportedly of Jesus’ bears long hair with beard and mustache. Scores of devotees went to pray on the so-called miraculous image.
Don’t get me wrong. In as much as I wanted to believe Jesus, I also wanted to examine the authenticity of His existence: First, the perplexities of His growth inside the womb of Mary. Second, His unknown birthday surrounded with many enigmas. And, His real look, whether or not he is truly beardy.
In an article entitled “Don’t You Remember Me?” published at https://www.catholicjournal.us/2012/09/11/dont-you-remember-me/, the author Fr. Joseph Esper tells us an incongruous narrative how the great artist Leonardo da Vinci of Milan, Italy, painted the images of Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot in his masterpiece –“The Last Supper.”
Because there was no photograph of Jesus in the early Christian era to be preserved for the next generation, da Vinci, being depleted of all options, had nothing to do but to read the written chronicles that described the character of Jesus. Somehow, out of visualization he could find a model image that meets the description of Jesus’ face.
One Sunday morning, as the story goes, da Vinci saw in the church a young choir conductor named Pieto Bandinelli, whose feature resembled how Jesus must be looked like. Bandinelli politely endured in the studio while da Vinci painted the first among the 13 expressions of his masterpiece.
Years later, da Vinci had to look for someone to be a model for Judas. In his quest he found a man convicted of murder in Rome to fit his imagination. That man was Pieto Bandinelli who admitted da Vinci saying: “Don’t you remember me? Years ago I was your model for the Lord, Jesus.”
Fr. Joseph Esper may have told us a fiction or an urban legend. But had Jesus been introduced to us untied of mysteries, we could have extolled His messianic mission free from doubts and suppositions of his real identity.
The devotees could not have worshiped the beardy image similar to Osama Bin Ladin that may be deciphered from the cumulous clouds, from the stain of pest’s urine on the ceiling, from the quadruped manure, or on the dirtiest hedging of canals and elsewhere.
Let your sound judgment refresh your recollection that those images were nothing but a fruit of da Vinci’s fertile mind that added to the world’s greatest hoax. God will not permit His people to be duped in total darkness. Whatever our religious affiliations, we can worship directly to the Almighty One.
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