Bones of the saints still inspiring the faithful (Catholic Caucus)

On a little make-shift altar on a sewing table in Kathy Adler’s house in Palmer, Alaska, there are minute, ornately glass-encased fragments of bone from two saints who are known the world over. Such relics of saints who once walked the earth are physical reminders that holiness is achievable – even for ordinary people who are flesh and bone, too.

A relic is an object such as a piece of clothing or a piece of the body that serves as a memorial of a deceased person.

According to the Catholic Church, “real” or “first-class” relics include parts of a saint’s body, clothing, objects used for penance and instruments of a martyr’s imprisonment or passion. Lesser, “representative” relics are objects placed in contact with a saint’s body or grave.

Revering relics is a long-standing Christian tradition, and a universal practice that predates Christianity. Ancient Greeks, Persians and Buddhists honored relics of their heroes. According to the Old Testament, the bones of Moses were venerated. And since apostolic times, honoring relics has been a Christian practice, as well.

In 156, the Christians of Smyrna described retrieving the bones of Saint Polycarp after he had been burned at the stake. “We took up his bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold,” they wrote, and laid them in a holy place where they could gather and “celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom.”

Early Christians buried their loved ones close to the tombs of martyrs like Saint Peter the Apostle, hoping that, as Saint Gregory of Nyssa explained, “in the hour of the resurrection they may be awakened together with these highly privileged comrades.”

By the fourth century, churches were cementing into stone altar tops small fragments of saints’ bones. That gave rise to the altar stone – a square of stone containing a relic – that was embedded in a church’s altar.

But in the early years, Christians’ enthusiasm about holy relics piqued the greed of scam artists who donned monks’ habits and hawked imitations.

To help combat the practice, the Catholic Church instituted safeguards. Those included tests to vet questionable relics, rules requiring the pope’s approval before newly found relics could be venerated and a prohibition against selling relics.

There is no proscription against buying a relic, however, in order to rescue it from someone not showing it proper respect. Nowadays, some ransom relics on eBay.

According to church law, no person or group may own a relic. One caring for a relic is considered a temporary guardian.

Obtaining first-class relics can be difficult. It took almost two years for the Anchorage Archdiocese to secure one from the Vatican for the altar at the Korean parish of St. Andrew Kim Taegon Church, named for the world’s first Korean-born Catholic priest and 19th century martyr.

“It’s really a process,” Vice Chancellor Eileen Kramer explained. Finally, the Vatican approved the request and FedXed a relic to Anchorage.

According to the Catholic Catechism, venerating holy relics is a form of Christian piety that should help the faithful “advance in knowledge of the mystery of Christ.”

“We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator,” stressed Saint Jerome, Church Father of the late 300s, “but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore him whose martyrs they are.”

At the Council of Trent, the church noted that saints’ relics are an important reminder that the saints’ bodies were “living members of Christ and ‘the temple of the Holy Ghost’ (1 Cor 6:19)” which are to be raised by God to eternal life and glory.

“We tend to view the saints as superheroes of the church,” observed Father Robert Fath, 32-year-old pastor of St. Nicholas Church in North Pole. It’s easy to “lose sight of the fact that they were human beings just like you and me,” he added.

So during November, when the universal church especially recalls the saints in heaven and souls in purgatory who are on the way there, Father Fath displays several reliquaries – akin to “mini-monstrances” – on a platform near the altar at St. Nicholas. They contain relics that help remind parishioners that the saints were “flesh and bone” – just as they are.

The relics are on loan from the Fairbanks Diocese’s archive. Others are on temporary display for veneration at the diocesan Catholic school. And another large collection containing relics of 102 saints is permanently maintained at Immaculate Conception Church in Fairbanks.

The relics at St. Nicholas Church are of saints from myriad backgrounds: Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions, lay Christians martyred in Uganda; Saint John Neumann, the 19th-century Philadelphia bishop who founded the diocesan school system in the United States; and Saint Andrew, who Christ chose as one of his Apostles.

By living “ordinary lives in extraordinary ways,” said Father Fath, they are “an example to all of us that we, too, could be proclaimed saints of the church one day.”

“All of us are called to holiness of life,” he explained. That requires “that we devote our lives and our vocations to God and live out his commandments in everything that we do, even the little things.”

Kathy Adler of Palmer, Alaska is daily reminded of that saintly mission. In her home, she has two first-class relics of Saint Maria Goretti and Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. They were passed down from a great-aunt who had managed to secure audiences with all the popes since Pope Pius XII, whose reign ended in 1958.

Adler keeps the relics on a little altar she crafted atop a sewing table in her bedroom. Along with the little, glass-encapsulated bone fragments, there is a statue of the Infant of Prague, a container of holy water from Lourdes, France, where the Blessed Mother appeared to Saint Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, several holy cards and a blessed candle.

Adler treats the relics with devotion. They are not “trinkets,” she said, but reminders that “we belong to the communion of saints” – that spiritual solidarity binding the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory and the saints of heaven in the mystical body of Christ.

Across the years, friend and fellow member of the Third Order Franciscans Jackie Palmer also has managed to secure first-class relics – of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Thomas the Apostle. The latter bit of “Doubting Thomas” went to her husband George who, after decades, converted to Catholicism. “I prayed for him for 42 years,” she noted.

Palmer said that she has taken good care of the relics because of their connection to Christ. Speaking of Saint Thomas, who the resurrected Christ invited to touch his wound, Palmer observed, “Anybody who was that close to Jesus, you want to be close to them, too.”

Since saints’ relics are “treasures,” Palmer is making arrangements to ensure they are in an appropriate, holy place after she and her husband die.

The relic of Saint Thomas is now enclosed in an altar of a chapel at a Catholic children’s school overseas.

Until Palmer finds a spot for the tiny splinter of Saint Francis’s bone, it will continue to inspire her faith.

“I was asked one time by a little girl, ‘Why do you have all these pictures and all these statues?’” Palmer recalled. Along with the relics, they are reminders of loved ones she has yet to meet, she said. “I’m getting used to being with my family because I hope I get to heaven.”

Holy Family Cathedral’s altar contains a relic of 19th century Saint Therese of Lisieux, patroness of Alaska. The altars at Holy Cross Church and Our Lady of Guadalupe are said to contain a bit of Christ’s Cross from Calvary. Holy Cross has relics, too, of Saint Maria Goretti and Saint Peregrine, the patron of cancer patients.

This "Catholic Caucus" post is starting to remind me of "The Scourging at the Pillar." I wish I could afford (and then send to FR) the amount necessary to get rid of the "comment removed by moderator" notation. But this was a great link you provided (here's an excerpt):“I prayed to Newman daily,” he said.

His doctor told him recovery would be months, possibly years, because the dura mater in his spine was not only compressed but torn up.

It was three weeks before the fourth-year diaconate classes were to begin. “I’ve got to try to walk,” Mr. Sullivan told his nurses.

“It took me 10 minutes to get myself to the edge of the bed. … the pain was constant,” he said. “I couldn’t get up. I was in agony. … I was brought to prayer. The same simple prayer. ‘Please Cardinal Newman help me to walk so that I can return to classes and be ordained.’

“Then something unbelievable happened. You talk about the communion of saints ... that experience I had approached that concept.

“Suddenly, I felt tremendous heat ... and a tingling feeling all over my body. I also felt a tremendous sense of peace and joy. … I was totally consumed, totally engulfed in what I have believed and will always believe was God’s presence. I had no willpower of my own. I was just totally captivated.

“I realized I was standing up, standing with no pain … I could walk normally,” he said.

The nurse offered him a walker, then a cane; but he needed neither. He walked up and down the corridors of the hospital with the nurse telling him to slow down. “How could I slow down?” he asked with a chuckle.

He was discharged that day, went on to diaconate classes, and was ordained a year later, on Sept. 14, 2002, the feast of the triumph of the cross. Link.
Beautiful! I'll show my daughter (this post) who shies away right out the door, when I start kissing the relics on the wall of our church.

I remember in RCIA when a woman brought in her collections of relics. That was a hard one for me.

But knowing that the early Christians prayed over the tombs of the martyrs . . . .

Do I venerate? Not really. It’s just like the apparitions. I don’t venerate those either.

I believe in all the Church, Magisterium, and Tradition teach. I can be a good Catholic by going to mass, confession and following the teachings.

What I find so freeing about the Catholic Church is that there is so much room for us all. Someone said: The Church is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

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