Simcha Fisher: Relics are friends

Do you have trouble focusing at Mass? Does your attention wander, and do you find yourself forgetting why you’re there and what you’re doing?  

May I recommend worshipping with 18 saints? That’s what has helped me.  

Here’s how that came about. As I describe in Our Sunday Visitor, I found a first-class relic of St Helen and a second-class relic of St Peter’s own altar at a second-hand store.  

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I paid six dollars to rescue them, got them restored and authenticated, and then set about learning why these little bits and pieces of bodies and cloth are so central to our faith.  

I ultimately turned the relics I found over to my pastor, who put them together with 16 other relics another parishioner had donated, and now all of them are in two glass cases at the altar. And we all go to Mass together: St Helen and St Peter, Sts Bridget, Bernadette, Peregrine, Anthony, Maria Goretti, Mary Magdalen, Monica, Augustine and Cecilia, Therese of Lisieux, and the apostles Phillip, Thomas, James, Bartholomew, Andrew and John, and me.  

I did not anticipate how moving it would be to see them all there, and to be there with them, with the Lord. 

I grew up in a Catholic home and had some exposure to relics, but I never really understood why the heck the church was so involved with them. I knew we were supposed to avoid treating them like magic talismans, and I understood that they were holy, but it always felt a little bit embarrassing – the kind of thing you have always done in your family but you gradually realise nobody else does; and when you ask your parents why you do it, they don’t have a good explanation.  

It felt like something that wasn’t sacred, because it was clearly a scrap of something with a little glue; but it also wasn’t profane (in the sense of ordinary and everyday), because it was a saint. It felt like something that should be hidden away, something that I would simply rather not deal with.  

It feels very different now.  

One of the things I learned, as I researched this piece, is that Catholics (and before that, ancient Jews) have always cherished and venerated physical relics of their holy dead, even – or especially – when the rest of the world found that practice creepy or dangerous or just kind of gross.  

We just really like our saints, and we like being with them, and ever since God came to earth and took on a body like ours, it just makes sense for a people who believe in the Incarnation to worship God together with bodies of the saints – not only after they die, but especially after they die.  

Because they are dead, we know they are on to something better, something we can anticipate if we stick close to them. It’s a whole group effort: Some of us are in heaven, some of us still on earth; some of us have passed into eternity, and some of us are just making our way through the 9:30am Mass on a Sunday in October; but we are all still doing the same thing, visibly together, before God. 

Seeing the relics displayed on the altar helps me tap into the mysterious gravity of what we are doing when we assemble in the church.  

When I start to feel that vague, rambling, everyday sensation, I try to remember to glance up at the altar and see the relics of the saints who are enjoying the Beatific Vision RIGHT NOW, silently but unmistakably joining in to our imperfect human form of worship here in my little New England parish. I feel, for the first time, like this august collection of saints are my friends.  

Me from 20 years ago would have rolled my eyes at this. I wanted very much to be a rugged individualist who did what I felt was right, powered entirely by my own intellect, will-power, and (though I wouldn’t have seen it this way at the time) self-righteousness.  

I definitely didn’t feel like worship would be enhanced by doing it with friends (and I never ever would have thought to call a relic a friend).  

But now I will freely confess: We need each other. We need to do things together. We need to hang around with people who are stronger than us.  

I have written frequently about the need to check yourself, so you’re not unduly influenced by a mob, or so you don’t lean too heavily on hiding in a crowd and doing whatever everyone else seems to be doing.  

I have said many times that, when we come to the end of our lives, there’s not going to be trends or factions or relativity; it’s just going to be us, alone before God, accounting for how we have spent our time.  

It’s very good to keep that in mind! Someday we will all be alone before God.  

But right now, we’re not. Right now, we’re with real people who have dealt with so many of the same things we’re dealing with now: Lust, envy, sloth, pride, wrath, gluttony, avarice. And doubt, and shame, and fear. And boredom, and a sense of tedium when we’re supposed to be worshipping.  

The saints have experienced all that, but they have all been rescued from the dreary and difficult world and it’s just not something they ever have to struggle with again.  

But! They also haven’t forgotten us. They still want to be with us. They are still with us, in the form of little bits and pieces of their bodies and their possessions. They stay with us to encourage and comfort us, just like any good friend would do.