A saint's lock of hair, bone shards, a vial of blood, even a severed hand whose discolored fingers curl in a macabre way are venerated by many members of the Catholic Church.
Others may just get the heebie-jeebies and wonder why holy people's body parts are even put on display.
But if one believes these men and women lived holy lives and accomplished extraordinary things, "wouldn't you want a souvenir," a way to connect and remember that person and what they've done, said Elizabeth Lev, an art historian and professor of art history at the Rome campuses of Duquesne University and the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.
The relic becomes a concrete reminder that the blessed or saint's body is here on earth and his or her soul is with God, she told Catholic News Service.
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A relic has no special or magical powers, Lev said. It would be a mistake to believe any object, even a holy object, can be a sort of "remote control" to make God do one's bidding or fulfill some heartfelt wish.
It's true some saints, objects, shrines and icons seem "more efficacious" than others in connecting people to God, Lev said. But it's not the object or the site bringing grace or a miracle; it is only a channel, an instrument through which God chooses to act.
[. . .]
Lev said an over-secularized world that rejects the divine and embraces the finite and man-made "leaves a void in people, a hunger to know that there is more" than just life and death on earth.
In the Catholic tradition and in its ceremonies and community of saints, there is a constant reminder that those who have died are still always present and part of the church, she said.
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| Reliquary containing relics of St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and St. Boniface; Warfhuizen, Netherlands |
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