Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Holy Face Appears at Back of Priest's Head


This is the famous "appearance" of what seems to be the face of Jesus Christ at the back of Rev. Fr. Thomas Chao's head (He is now in his 90's and is a priest from China who was tortured during the communist take-over and migrated to the Philippines; he was an assistant priest at St. Peter's Parish in Paco, Philippines and is now back in China continuing his apostolate. His priestly vocation has been renewed and reinvigorated when he started celebrating Tridentine Mass as requested by EDDSJ). This happened sometime April 1996 when during the Gloria, members of the congregation noticed the image and fortunately, someone brought a video recorder. Fr.Chao had no idea of what was happening and after Mass, people were telling him of what occured and he was informed of the image still remaining in his head. He seemed to be confused of what truly happened since people started weeping. It took the following Sunday for him to see the video of what happened and was overwhelmed of the event. The succeeding Sunday, he returned to celebrate Mass with his head almost shaved yet the image could still be seen forming through the little hair left. The video is more dramatic since it can be seen clearly through a certain angle. I was present during his Tridentine Mass and can attest of the truthfulness of the event that no trickery was involved either through tattooing nor coloring/shaping his hair. He was featured in one of the episodes of the now defunct channel 2's ":Balitang K" TV program of Korina Sanchez which interviewed him and several witnesses. When a local Church official was interviewed too, he did not give a favorable view on the event since he said there was no clear message given (he did not even bother to investigate). However for us, the message is clear, that it is really Jesus Christ who is the celebrant of the Holy Mass and that he favors our Tridentine apostolate inspite of trials coming from both the progressive and traditonalist sides of the local Catholic Church in the Philippines. Fr. Chao who is so humble and is very saintly occassionally visits the Philippines and still celebrates the Tridentine Mass inspite of his advanced age. May he have more years to come!

1 comment:

Euqilegna said...

This image is in credits of Mr.Ng. He was the one who captured the moment with his video camera and later on submitted it to the media.

Although recognition is not important, I believe it is privilege that my friend's father caught this moment. We are all truly blessed.

God Bless!