I missed in Scripture ever recorded someone worshipping, idolizing, praying to them, or fondling and kissing them.
“Come out from among them and be holy.”
n the New Testament, we find two instances of God working through objects related to holy people. The first comes from the Gospel of Mark and is related to Jesus:
When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. (Mark 5.27-29)
And the second comes from the book of Acts and is related to the Apostle Paul:
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. (Acts 19.11-12)
We can see in both the Old and the New Testaments the precedence for thinking that God could work miracles through each of the kinds of relics: a first degree relic in the case of Elisha’s body, a second degree relic in the case of Jesus’ clothes, and a third degree relic in the case of the the items Paul had touched. Technically, the Church holds any object related to Christ to be a first degree relic since Jesus is, after all, God incarnate, but the point here is that there is a clear precedence in Scripture for thinking that God could work a miracle through the belonging of a holy person.