By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I must admit, as a lifelong Catholic, that I often have rolled my eyes at the notion of keeping and honoring relics. I have thought it strange that if you lived a consecrated life, served the poor, were deemed to be esteemed, and ultimately canonized as a saint, your fate would be to have parts of your body chopped up and distributed to and displayed by churches and the faithful. Now I am having second thoughts.
One of the historian William Manchester’s memorable descriptions of the great English statesman Winston Churchill is that he “always had second and third thoughts and they usually improved as he went along.” My own relic rethink is due to an epiphany about the personal meaningfulness of various items we collected from my mother’s home after she passed away over ten years ago.
“The word relic comes from the Latin relinquo, literally meaning I leave, or I abandon. A relic is a piece of the body of a saint, an item owned or used by the saint, or an object which has been touched to the tomb of a saint.” (www.catholiceducation.org) My mother was not a saint, but her home was filled with relics, which now have been claimed and are precious to those who knew and loved her.
My sister treasures the Rosenthal-made German china and silver that Mom bought while stationed with the Air Force in Europe in the early 1960s. We used them at every family holiday meal before my parents divorced. My niece Katie loves the giant decorative wooden fork and spoon that hung in Mom’s kitchen and fascinated Katie when she visited there as a little girl. My own son Danny collects pennies, nickels, and dimes in Mom’s old piggy bank, a ceramic carafe depicting a painted rooster crowing “Cock a doodle dough!”
The practice of venerating relics also seems less strange to me now, as a husband and parent, considering that we have collected and cherish various relics from our marriage and the younger ages of our children. This includes a plate and cup used at our wedding mass, photos, a child’s first lost tooth, or even a baby’s lock of hair.
I also have looked with new eyes at one of our family heirlooms, a small fragment of bone from the body of St. Clare of Assisi, who died in 1253. Like her friend St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare was kind of a rock star in my childhood home. The relic includes a certificate of authenticity signed and dated January 10, 1968, from the Office of the Vicar General of Rome and someone named Cardinal Luigi Traglia. Today, some 20,000 Poor Clare sisters, Clare’s spiritual descendants, pray for the needs of the church, the world, and all people. That certainly seems like a life, legacy, and mission worth remembering.
Remembering is at the heart of any relic, and the practice is more contemporary than we might realize. Consider the 2017 Disney movie Coco. The animated film tells the story of Dios de los Muertos, the day of the dead (November 1), when our beloved who have gone before continue to live only if we actively recall them, e.g. with a photo…a relic.
Indeed, it is the simple and lovely Academy Award-winning theme song from Coco that perhaps best explains the very spirit of relics that I seemed to misunderstand for so many years:
“Remember me
Though I have to say goodbye
Remember me
Don’t let it make you cry
For ever if I’m far away
I hold you in my heart
I sing a secret song to you
Each night we are apart
Remember me
Though I have to travel far
Remember me
Each time you hear a sad guitar
Know that I’m with you
The only way that I can be
Until you’re in my arms again
Remember me.”
