A Former Protestant Learns about Relics: Part II

To provide further justification, Father Martins told the crowd the powerful story of
Saint Bernadette, the young woman who as a girl witnessed multiple Marian apparitions at
Lourdes, France.

Young Bernadette eventually joined a convent, led a holy life, and later died of tuberculosis at the age of 35, in 1879. Some 46 years later, the church exhumed her body to discern her canonization. Astonishingly, her body appeared to be preserved from decomposition. Father Martins showed extraordinary pictures taken of her body after she was exhumed and powerful pictures of her still-preserved body today, which lies in a glass casket in Lourdes.

My wife and I also loved the detail of the atheist doctor who initially examined Saint Bernadette. The Church asked the doctor to examine the body so that the Church would not be accused of trying to trick people. That doctor, stunned and convinced of a miracle, later converted to Catholicism.

We were excited to see the relics, all of which were enclosed in special cases for protection, but before we could see them, Father Martin told us something important. The power of God could work  through the relics, but we had to be purified before that power could truly work upon us.

For example, were we unforgiving to anyone in our lives at that moment? If so, we were not following Christ’s injunction to forgive others as He forgives us. Had we avoided the confessional and lived out our daily lives without a prayer life or without a devotion to the scriptures?

Father Martins mentioned these and other things that might prevent our reception of Grace, and it was clear that he was helping us also understand not to be superstitious towards the relics, like we could just touch one and witness a miracle.  Basically, all he said about purification can be boiled down to one of Christ’s beatitudes:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5: 8).

And I will be honest with you, reader, my wife and I were not “pure in heart” when we left the nave and made our way to the hall that held the relics. Not because we were unforgiving towards our neighbors or without a prayer life, but because we were distracted. You see, by the time Father Martin’s presentation ended, it was well after 6 pm, and my wife and I knew grandma couldn’t contain our two kids much longer.

Then, as we exited the Nave, we saw that an enormous line had already been coiling its way around the entire church — some people had skipped the presentation in order to stand in line for the hall holding the relics. Thankfully, we were allowed to stand in a somewhat shorter line close to our exit, but it’s hard to meditate on the extraordinary while you wattle inch-by-inch in a line towards a crowded room.

But we still tried. We had prayer cards and rosaries and tried to talk to each other about what we were about to witness. When we finally entered the room, row upon row of tables held the relics, but the room was still packed with people. And it was hot. A speaker behind a stage curtain strained to play holy music, but the noise from the packed room muffled it. In short, distracted as we were, my wife and I did not achieve inner sanctity.

Still, it was awesome. We touched our prayer cards and rosaries to relics, and we prayed in front of relics from St. Augustine, John Paul The II, St. Thomas Aquinas, Mother Theresa, Saint Maxmillian Kolbe, St. Irenaeus, and more. We had to finish quick and hurry home, but as we left, we witnessed other parishioners in a state that seemed to be a kind of spiritual ecstasy, especially men and women kneeling and weeping in front of a relic of the true cross of Christ.

My wife and I returned home, spoke to our kids about the experience, and placed our relics in an area of our home devoted to prayer, scripture study, and spiritual readings, a kind of icon corner, which now holds our relics plus a catechism, crosses, rosaries, holy water, and The Bible.

A few days later, I was speaking with a coworker of mine, a devout Baptist and a wonderful Christian. We didn’t discuss the relic exhibit, but she knows I’m Catholic, and she enjoys speaking with me privately about our faith. In this conversation, we concluded by acknowledging a simple but  important fact: you can be a good Christian and a Baptist, but you can be a bad Christian and a Baptist; you can also be a good Christian and Catholic or a bad Christian and Catholic.

Our differences are important, but the life of a Christian, I think most of us can agree, should lead to a life of Charity, a love of God and love of neighbor. Perhaps some of those people kneeling in deep prayer in front of the relics were much closer to a union with God than I was; I certainly think it was true at the time, but that is one of the truths of the Church I love: we cooperate with God’s Grace. The more we do so, the closer we come to God and the purer in heart we become, some of us more than others.

But Christ’s Church provides its multitude of diverse members a multitude of ways to come closer to God. And even though my wife and I found the relic experience to be rewarding if not immediately life-changing, we knew we learned another aspect of the Church we could love, and since it is Catholic teaching that Christ is the head of the Church, it stands to reason that in a small way, at least, the whole experience brought my wife and I closer together and closer to Christ.

Like I mentioned earlier, the Catholic Church is endlessly fertile. My wife and I are over six years into our Catholic faith and are still discovering something new every day, and it’s that sense of joyful discovery that we love. Neither of us can tell you that the relics in our home have transformed our lives radically, but we know that we love having them in our home and in our prayer sanctuary.

My wife and I are far from saints, but we love belonging to the Church that has so many ways to help us achieve that goal, whether in this life or the next.

Cited Sources
Bible citations come from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition
The quote from the Texas Catholic Herald appears in Volume 59, No. 9, page 4.
Here is the website for Treasures of the Church: https://treasuresofthechurch.com/