Post 2680. No need to apologize, it was fascinating, and I enjoyed it immensely
"The saints hear God, — and you and me, too,— but not with their bodies. How, we don’t know, but we know even from the scripture that they do: “we also having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head” (Hebrews 12:1).
The fragmentation, scattering or any kind of destruction of the body will not prevent God, Who made Adam from mud, from restoring the dead to their glorified bodies. The relics are reminders that this will happen, but we should not imagine that God will mechanically reassemble the saint from his relics"
Thanks. I thought of a different post.
What you quoted from me is, of course, not an explanation or interpretation of Hebrews 12:1 at all. It is what the Church teaches on sainthood and on the last days, but it is not merely an interpretation of one verse, or even many verses.
I would be the first to admit that the Catholic Church does not derive its teaching from the Scripture by way of interpreting scripture. Rather, she has the teaching from Christ Who taught the Apostles, known as the Holy Tradition. That entire Holy Tradition, the Sacred Deposit of Faith is what gets interpreted and applied to the changing times. The Holy Scripture is one way to teach among many, and the Scripture itself was produced by the Church faithful to the knowledge already received from non-scriptural sources. The lives of the saints, for example, are not scripture but they teach us by their example, and often their magisterial teaching. The outward form of the Catholic liturgy (its essence is supernatural encounter with Christ) is to be sure, textually nearly entirely scripture, but it intentionally has musical and artistic dimension because that, too is a teaching tool of the Church.
So it is a very different system than the Protestant exegetical system based on the Bible alone.
Especially, on the veneration of saints, the scriptural support is scant. This is natural, because both mass adoption of Christianity and mass martyrdom of saints occurred after the canonical Scripture was written.
You might notice that in my frequent references to the Holy Scripture, I stay in the perimeter of things that I am convinced Protestantism erred greatly: issues of justification, sacramental, liturgical and hierarchical nature of the Church, role of faith and works, — all things that are amply elucidated in the Scripture. Luckily, the Protestants happen to also profess very high regard for the scripture and my job is thereby easy.
But should anyone ask me why Catholics teach certain things about the saints, liturgy, civil society, sexual morality, rules of war, celibacy and monasticism and I will admit to you that these are not things covered by the scripture very well. Thewy sure do not contradict the scripture, but they do not derive from it.
So, in short, we play the game a little bit differently than you guys.