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What if Jesus were alive today?

That was the idea I had in my mind when I began to research my novel, “The Sixth Station.” What did Jesus really look like? And is it possible that His DNA still exists somewhere in the world?

I found the answers to both questions in a life-size relic with Jesus’ face imbedded without paint or dye of any kind on what I believe is His burial face cloth.

But finding this relic, known as il Volto Santo, or the Holy face, researching those questions and finding those answers would take me six years, through five countries and three continents. I would travel with an exorcist priest connected with the Vatican. I would stay in a monastery and spend two days interviewing a nun who lives a hermetic existence and has devoted her life to studying the actual face of Jesus on a 2,000-year-old relic in a monastery in Italy.

I even hiked a 4,800 foot mountain in France – twice!

What I found was not a portrait, nor merely an idea of what Jesus looked like, but the real, authentic face of Jesus, imbedded on a cloth– and no I’m no referring to the Shroud of Turin, although it plays a huge role in the story. What I found was a transparent piece of fabric often referred to as the Veil of Veronica hiding in plain sight.

Stranger still, when the Shroud image, which is actually an opaque negative, (like a photo negative!) is put beneath the totally transparent, positive Veil image, they form a complete and actual portrait of the face of Jesus!

At the time Jesus was laid to rest, it was tradition for a face cloth, first placed over the face before a Shroud was then wrapped around the body and face.

The image was transferred onto the cloth miraculously, and the Shroud took on the negative as an oxidation transfer perhaps.

I thought it would be especially meaningful to offer QVC buyers only, a set of two cards with the images – one of the totally transparent veils with the face bearing bruises on the nose and cheek and one of the opaque Shroud of Turin shipped with every book. What you see will astound and confound you. Together these two images form what may in fact be the real face of Jesus at the moment of his resurrection!

“The Sixth Station” took me around the world as it does the heroine of the book, 42-year old NYC reporter, Alessandra Russo. She has lost her faith when an extraordinary catapults her into a world of religion, terror, and even romance on her dangerous quest for the ultimate truth.

The story is fiction, but the relic is real!

- Linda Stasi, Author