Relics: What Up With That?

As I have mentioned many times, one of the coolest things about living in Rome is the many relics of saints that can be found all over the city.  Living in Rome, the saints become very real because you are walking the same streets, praying in the same churches, seeing the same art, and experiencing the same grandeur of Rome that they experienced centuries ago.  So knowing where apostles prayed, where saints celebrated Mass, where Popes walked, you can see that sanctity is possible.  We can live heroic lives of virtue.  We can pursue holiness with all that we have.  So by knowing the saints, we ourselves can model their lives and become holier men and women.  With this post, I hope to do two things: Show you some awesome relics and try to explain the theology behind them.  Because when you think about it, just having a saint's body or body parts out for people to see sounds pretty weird.  And for Americans, this concept is super foreign because of the relative "youth" of our country.  We haven't had the history with the Catholic Church that Europe has, so we don't have as many canonized saints, and therefore, nowhere near as relics.  So first, I will share with you some of my favorite relics that I could get decent pictures of, and then I will try to explain why we even have relics in the first place.

Our first saint we see is St. Robert Bellarmine, a great Jesuit Cardinal from the 1600s.  He was an important figure in the Counter-Reformation, combating the Protestants and solidifying the Catholic theology that the Protestants had problems with.  Did he change the theology?  Absolutely not.  The Church cannot change Her teachings.  But it can be better explained or applied to more specific circumstances.  And that is what St. Robert Bellarmine did.  He is buried in the Church of St. Ignatius along with St. Aloysius Gonzaga.  Here is his body, still dressed in the cardinal red.  His remains are in a bronze cast of his body, so don't be too freaked out by that.

The next relic I have a picture of is St. Charles Borromeo's heart.  That's right, his heart.  And the fact that it is still around and visible is miraculous in itself.  The rest of his body is up in Milan, so I haven't seen that.  But St. Charles Borromeo was also an important cardinal during the Counter-Reformation and was one of the most important cardinals who helped formulate the rubrics of what Catholic Churches should look like.  While most of those instructions have been thrown out in America for more "modern and welcoming" spaces, that is neither here nor there.  St. Charles Borromeo is the patron saint of seminarians, and I am a seminarian, so that is pretty neat.  But ya, the heart is in the middle of the glass sphere behind the bars, so if you click on the picture, you should be able to see it.  

Our next saint, or saints, are two apostles, James the Lesser and Phillip.  That's right, apostles.  And these are just two apostles that were easy for me to get to here in Rome.  There are quite a few around here.  So when you think of the apostles, what do you think about?  Personally, I think "Wow, these guys hung out with JESUS AND MARY!!!"  If that isn't cool, I am not sure what is.  These two men were among the Twelve that  saw Jesus perform His miracles.  They received the Eucharist at the Last Supper.  They received the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  Our Church wasn't just made up by some dude in the 1600s, it is founded on real people.  And they gave it all, shedding their blood for Christ.  And these real people are buried about 5 minutes from where I go to school every day.  Here I am, just a few feet from their tombs.  How incredible is that?  

Now we are getting to some of my favorite relics in Rome.  Not that the others aren't cool, these are more personal or even more mind blowing.  Here, we have the arm of St. Francis Xavier.  Francis Xavier is the patron saint of the Diocese of Joliet, so obviously, I have a special devotion to him.  He was a Jesuit who was sent on mission to convert the people of Asia.  He was incredibly zealous and truly wanted to spread the Good News of Christ to a continent that had never heard of Jesus before.  And through prayer and dedication to his mission, he baptized around 100,000 people.  Baptizing a person, you need to pour water over the head of the person, and Whoa! look at that, we have the arm that he did that with.  The hand is incorrupt, which means that even though he has been dead for centuries, the flesh has not decayed.  Again, pretty neat.  Actually just today, we had Mass at this altar with Bishop Siegel and Fr. Matt Pratscher.  After Mass, I helped clean up and could have given Francis Xavier a high five.  I didn't, but I wanted to.......   

Now this is probably my favorite relic, the head of my favorite saint, St. John the Baptist.  And there is a bit of controversy with this one, because multiple churches around the world claim to have the head of John the Baptist.  But since I found this one, I believe that this is the true head of the Forerunner of the Messiah.  Take a moment and think about what John the Baptist did, and then realize that this skull did that.  So ya, it was from this skull that the first time ever were muttered the words "Behold the Lamb of God."  That's right, the words you hear every time you go to Mass can be traced to the mouth seen in this picture.  Kind of mind blowing.  And this skull helped baptize Jesus Christ   Ya, that's pretty neat.  Oh, and don't forget that John was beheaded for preaching repentance to King Herod, acting as the first martyr for Christ, giving himself completely to the mission the Lord gave him.  So this head was chopped off all for the greater glory of God.  And here it is, in Rome         

The last relic I have to show you is a foot.  And you're probably thinking "O, it's going to be the foot of Jesus or something? I mean, these just keep on getting better, so the next step up would be Jesus, or at least Mary."  But that assumption would be wrong because Jesus and Mary both have their bodies in Heaven because of the Ascension and the Assumption respectively.  But it is a person who knew Jesus and Mary.  That is because this is the foot of Mary Magdalene.  And you're like "OK, what's so cool about that ?"  If we look at the Gospels, we realize that Mary Magdalene was the first one to enter the empty tomb. So this was the very first foot to enter the tomb of the Risen Lord.  So just sit and ponder that one for a while.  This foot experienced the emptiness of the tomb.  This foot crossed the line from death into new life.  And again, it is here in Rome.  Don't ask me how, but here it is.  And it is just incredible.  It is in a silver mold, so that is not actually her foot visible, it is inside that.      

So we have these relics, so what?  Why should you care about these things?   Is this just the Church being creepy?  I hope not.  Hopefully I can explain the reasoning behind it, in a couple different ways.  The first is more philosophical, and the second is more theological.  First, philosophy.  As Catholics, we believe that we are both body and soul composites.  That means our identity, our very being, is made up of both our body and our soul, together as one.  And it is very dangerous to believe otherwise.  If you think that we are just bodies with no souls, then it follows that we are not rational beings. We cannot reason at any level higher than any animal out there, like a squirrel in your backyard.  And if you think that we are just souls trapped in our bad bodies, then any bodily pleasure would be sinful.  But our bodies are gifts from God, so why would He give us bodies if He knew that it would only lead us to sin?  So both of these options are absurd, meaning that we must be composites of both body and soul.  And as human persons who have bodies and souls, when a person is holy and grows close to God, not only does his soul grow in union with God, but so does his body.  Our bodies were sanctified by Christ when He took on flesh.  They are holy things.  And this is why we venerate the bodies of saints.  Their bodies are holy things.  Even after death, we still believe that they are holy and deserve to be honored because of their heroic lives.  And it is through these relics that the Lord transmits grace to the faithful.  Because when you think about it, when you are around a really holy person, you can feel it right?  There is something special about going to Mass with a holy priest, meeting awesome sisters, or seeing a devout married couple.  They radiate Christ's love in a way that is very hard to describe.  But it is through these saint relics that we can receive the grace needed to live holy lives and ask for the saints intercession in our lives.  So when we grow in holiness, both our body and our soul grows in holiness.  And it is because of this growth in holiness that we can venerate the relics of saints.  

The more theological reasoning behind relics focuses on the Resurrection of the Body.  You say that you believe in the Resurrection of the Body every Sunday during the creed, but do we actually know what that means?  When Christ comes again at the end of time, we believe that everyone will get their bodies back.  We will come into fleshly existence again.  And according to St. Thomas Aquinas, these bodies will be awesome.  We will be youthful, our bodies won't hinder our movement at all, and any physical imperfection will be gone.  And this will be the time of the final judgement, when Christ will separate the "sheep from the goats" for all of eternity.  So the sheep get to go to Heaven for all eternity, and the goats will be suffering down in Hell.  God, who is love, is also justice, so this is something that we need to keep on mind throughout our lives.  Just because we are "nice people" doesn't really mean a whole lot in the course of things.  We need to follow Christ with everything that we have.  And relics shows that the saints whom we venerate, the bodies that we see, these are the men and women who are in Heaven and will be there for all of eternity.  It is like "This guy made it.  I can do that too."  Their bodies, during the Resurrection of the Dead, will be welcomed into the gates of Paradise for all of eternity.  So we venerate their bodies becasue we know where they are going at the end of time, and that place is Heaven. 

So that is my piece on relics.  I know that it was a bit long, but hopefully you enjoyed it.  And I am sure that there are a lot more questions out there about this kind of stuff, so feel free to ask me anything.  I will definitely try my hardest to answer anything you may have.  

All you holy men and women - Pray for us!