By DEB PIROCH
Catholics, as members of the Church founded by Christ Himself, know that our bodies are “Temples of the Holy Spirit.” At our Resurrection, you will recall, we will be reunited, body and soul. Therefore, all bodies — even the dead — are accorded utmost respect. Funeral Masses are done before the body is buried or cremated, and the latter is allowed only if not intended to disrespect the Church’s teachings.
This is why it is so horrendous that the bodies of thousands or millions of martyrs have been tossed aside, thrown in pits, or otherwise “disposed of,” without even the decency of a burial. A modern analogy would be that of the disposal of aborted babies, who though not saints, are placed in biohazard bags and thrown out like trash. Every time this happens, we are insulting God yet one more time.
Obviously, God makes provision for all those who die in a state of grace and in difficult means where bodies are destroyed. (He likewise makes provision for those who visit these deeds on others and we must pray for their conversion.) Since they have been left open to the elements, it is not unusual for those who loved them to seek a token of remembrance at the time.
People today often have difficulty with the concept of relics, though it’s insanely simple. Do you now keep the belongings of a relative? A bracelet of your grandmother’s? A lock of hair from your mother? Well, the hairshirt of St. Thomas More is preserved. Yes, sometimes all we have left are the bones of a saint, which seems gruesome. But relics of all kinds have been promoted biblically, as well as from a human need to remember these witnesses to Christ.
In the night, during the brutal persecutions under King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, those hung, drawn, and quartered were thrown in a pit at the end of the day at Tyburn, entrails and all. Some Catholics would sneak back and dip a handkerchief in the martyrs’ blood. If that was all you had left that day of a friend, a priest, a relative, would you have considered doing the same in those horrible times?
There is another difference, of course, which is that your grandfather’s lock of hair has no exculpatory power; it is not a sacramental. It is not used to bring our mind to the idea of venerating the saint and asking him/her to intercede for us or give praise before the throne of God. A first-class relic must be a part of a saint’s body — hair, bone, tooth. A second-class relic must be something that the saint owned. A third-class relic is something that touched one of those items or that the saint touched. One of the most obvious relics is the Shroud of Turin.
In “modern times” — and every age thinks of itself in these terms — many are ashamed to believe or even consider relics as anything but old-fashioned or grisly. However, the Church has always encouraged relics as a devotional tool. They can be an instrument of grace or healing.
Recall for yourselves the Gospel of Mark (9:21-22): “For she said within herself: If I shall touch only His garment, I shall be healed. But Jesus turning and seeing her, said: Be of good heart, daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.”
The greatest repository of relics outside the Vatican is in a small church in Pittsburgh, Pa. St. Anthony’s Chapel was founded in 1891 and the church’s priest was an immigrant German, Fr. Suitbert Godfrey Mollinger. He collected and used the relics when blessing his parishioners in their afflictions, but also, being a physician, he could write a prescription at the same time! At one point the church ran out of room for the relics, so he paid for an expansion in 1880. By the time he passed away, there were over 5,000 relics. Even Protestants came to solicit his blessings.
Pittsburgh was fortunate to have Fr. Mollinger. As a German, he was aware that in Europe many relics were being destroyed. For instance, Otto von Bismarck was not friendly to the Church (he barred clergy from marrying couples before they were first married in a civil ceremony). So, Father had people he knew on the lookout to obtain legitimate relics and insisted on the paperwork to prove their authenticity. He saved a lot of these precious religious objects from being lost to history.
In the hundreds of reliquary cases, one alone contains 700 relics. This church still holds services, which includes adoration time to pray to the saints. On a quiet street, it’s surely a sad thing that people aren’t flocking there now as in the times of Fr. Mollinger. But it’s a good thought; why not visit a holy place during Lent?
By the way, you certainly don’t need a relic to pray, it is merely one of many tools that the Church offers us for our own spiritual benefit. But if you do go to St. Anthony’s for the Stations, for instance, you can also see the life-sized Stations Fr. Mollinger had carved in Germany and brought over for the chapel.
Fr. Mollinger gave St. Anthony of Padua, who lived in the thirteenth century, all the credit for the achievements at the parish. We all associate Anthony with finding lost objects. St. Anthony’s own relics are displayed in the Basilica in Padua, Italy. He died in 1241 but when they opened up the grave, roughly thirty years after his death, to move him to the finer location, they found that although most of his body had been reduced to dust, but his tongue was incorrupt. He had always been a fine speaker. His tongue and jaw are both now on display in Padua in ornate gold reliquaries.
By the way, if you ever do go on a Pittsburgh pilgrimage, where this side of Heaven will you ever get the chance to be in the same room with roughly 5,000 saints? Oh, and by the way, if someone ever tries to sell you a relic to make money, this is expressly forbidden by the Church. The most that can be done is asking for a small fee to cover costs. So, if someone is trying to sell you an expensive relic, exit the transaction quickly!
St. Anthony of Padua and dear Fr. Mollinger, help us to use these resources and pray for us to achieve a good and holy Lenten transformation for the better. As St. Anthony once said: “A ray of light enables us to see the dust that is in the air. In the same way, the lives of the saints show us our defects. If we fail to see our faults, it is because we have not looked at the lives of holy men and women.” Amen.
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