It’s funny to me how a culture that is filled with autograph hounds and those who clamor to be around those glittered with “star dust” can consider the Catholic veneration of relics as a joke. A lovely dish is just a lovely dish, but one owned by your great-grandmother is a treasure. Some stranger’s pocketwatch is just a timepiece, but one given to you by your grandfather is something you’d literally mourn losing. We pay $20,000 for a $200 jacket worn by Jacqueline Kennedy, faint at Beatles concerts, engage in riotous behavior to get our hands on one of Elvis’s scarves, but when a relic of St. Catherine is mentioned, people snicker.
As you can see, however, from these verses (Exodus 13:19; 2 Kings 13:20-21; Matthew 9:20-22; Acts 19:11-12), veneration of relics is strictly scriptural, and the earliest Christians saw things in the same way as the ancient Israelites and those in the New Testament accounts. St. Augustine (A.D. 354 – 430) wrote in City of God:
If a father’s coat or ring, or anything else of that kind, is so much more cherished by his children, as love for one’s parents is greater, in no way are the bodies themselves to be despised, which are much more intimately and closely united to us than any garment; for they belong to man’s very nature,
St. Jerome (ca. A.D. 340 – 420) clarified Catholic belief in his Ad Riparium:
We do not adore, I will not say the relics of the martyrs, but either the sun or the moon or even the angels — that is to say, with the worship of “latria”…But we honor the martyrs’ relics, so that thereby we give honor to Him Whose [witness] they are: we honor the servants, that the honor shown to them may reflect on their Master… Consequently, by honoring the martyrs’ relics we do not fall into the error of the Gentiles, who gave the worship of “latria” to dead men.
When considering relics, it is to be remembered that the body and soul are forever one, even when they seem to be separated by death. The body of the saved will be resurrected and glorified (the bodies of the damned will also be resurrected, for that matter). Forever is there a connection between the remains and the soul that has departed from them — and the great souls whose remains are left to us have a power described well by St. John of Damascus (a.k.a. “John Damascene”), ca. A.D. 676 – 754/87, in his “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith“:
These [the bodies of the Saints] are made treasuries and pure habitations of God: For I will dwell in them, said God, and walk in them, and I will be their God. The divine Scripture likewise saith that the souls of the just are in God’s hand and death cannot lay hold of them. For death is rather the sleep of the saints than their death. For they travailed in this life and shall to the end, and Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. What then, is more precious than to be in the hand of God? For God is Life and Light, and those who are in God’s hand are in life and light.
Further, that God dwelt even in their bodies in spiritual wise, the Apostle tells us, saying, Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you?, and The Lord is that Spirit, and If any one destroy the temple of God, him will God destroy. Surely, then, we must ascribe honour to the living temples of God, the living tabernacles of God. These while they lived stood with confidence before God.
The Master Christ made the remains of the saints to be fountains of salvation to us, pouring forth manifold blessings and abounding in oil of sweet fragrance: and let no one disbelieve this. For if water burst in the desert from the steep and solid rock at God’s will and from the jaw-bone of an ass to quench Samson’s thirst, is it incredible that fragrant oil [see below] should burst forth from the martyrs’ remains? By no means, at least to those who know the power of God and the honour which He accords His saints.
In the law every one who toucheth a dead body was considered impure, but these are not dead. For from the time when He that is Himself life and the Author of life was reckoned among the dead, we do not call those dead who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection and in faith on Him. For how could a dead body work miracles? How, therefore, are demons driven off by them, diseases dispelled, sick persons made well, the blind restored to sight, lepers purified, temptations and troubles overcome, and how does every good gift from the Father of lights come down through them to those who pray with sure faith?
Orignally published on Fisheaters.com.
