As Christians prepare for Easter, Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Slawomir Szkredka is highlighting a subtle but powerful detail in John’s Gospel that he says helps explain why the Beloved Disciple was the first to believe in the Resurrection: the cloth that covered Christ’s face lying in the tomb.
A detail in the empty tomb
In the Gospel of John, the apostle Peter and the Beloved Disciple — whom tradition identifies as John himself — run to Jesus’ tomb after learning it is empty. While the Beloved Disciple arrives first, he does not enter but peers inside and sees the linen burial cloths. Peter then arrives, enters the tomb, and notices something specific: the separate “napkin” (soudarion in Greek) that had covered Jesus’ head. It was not tossed aside in haste, but rolled up and placed separately in the tomb. Only then does John enter the tomb, and he “saw and believed,” the Gospel says.
In a reflection published April 1 by Angelus News, Bishop Szkredka asked, “What does [John] see now that he did not see when he first looked from outside the tomb? Well, the face cloth (soudarion) seems to be the only detail that is new. It must have communicated something to John. But what?”
The bishop also noted that Peter is not mentioned in the Gospel as attaining the same faith as John in this moment.
Bishop Szkredka asked, “Why would it be only John to believe that the Lord is risen? Is he simply more perceptive?”
For many readers, the detail of the face cloth suggests that the tomb had not been robbed; Christ’s body had not been stolen in chaos by thieves. But according to Bishop Szkredka, that fact points to a far more profound scriptural meaning behind John’s faith.
The veil and the new Moses
The bishop pointed out in his reflection that the Greek word soudarion — likely a Latin “loan word” — also appears in some Aramaic renderings of the Old Testament as sudara, the veil Moses wore after his face shone with God’s glory on Mount Sinai in Exodus 34. The Israelites could not bear to look upon that brilliance, so Moses would veil his face and remove it when entering the presence of God.
Bishop Szkredka said that John, steeped in the Scriptures, would likely have recognized the rolled-up veil in Christ’s tomb as a sign that Jesus — presented in the Gospels as the new Moses — had removed it as He rose through the Resurrection to His Father.
“But all these intriguing linguistic connections aside, there is something deeply human about the veil covering the head of the Lord being removed,” he added. “And there’s a certain saint that (literally) sheds some light on the scene.”
Divine Mercy and the unveiled gaze
Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, the early 20th-century Polish mystic whose visions inspired the Divine Mercy devotion, described encounters with the risen Jesus that echo the mercy John witnessed.
The Divine Mercy image — showing Christ with rays of light streaming from his heart — depicts the Lord stepping into the Upper Room where the fearful disciples had gathered, Bishop Szkredka said, much as Christ entered the darkness of the tomb, sin, and fear.
According to her diary, Jesus tells St. Faustina that his gaze from the image carries the same merciful look he gave from the cross — a gaze that John alone among the apostles witnessed at Calvary.
“When John enters the tomb, which in Greek is called mnēmeion, a place of remembrance, he remembers that merciful gaze,” Bishop Szkredka wrote. “But now he also sees that this gaze is no longer veiled by death. Death covered it only for a time. With the veil of death removed, mercy triumphs. John saw it and believed.”
Bishop Szkredka framed the burial veil not merely as a historical or archaeological curiosity, but as an Easter symbol of hope and transformation: the barrier between God and humanity has been removed. The veil of death, he wrote, which has covered “the face of humanity” since Adam and Eve’s fall, is “now being lifted as the glory of God, reflected on the face of the Risen Lord, is seen by those who believe.”
“When we look at the image of Divine Mercy, Jesus’ eyes gaze downward. We do not see them. We see his face, but he has not looked at us yet,” Bishop Szkredka concluded. “When he does, our gazes will meet. We will be enveloped in God’s mercy. We will believe in the Resurrection."