Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

When was the last time you thought about relics? I mean really thought about them. What they are, where they come from, what they do, and the like?

There’s a great book on relics by Charles Freeman titled Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe. The author explores the robust way that relics shaped the politics, economies, and more of places across Europe and beyond.

We tend to think of relics as a Christian phenomenon but all cultures have some version — some way of reaching the essence of a person through the remains they leave behind. For example, Achilles had so honored his beloved friend Patroclus before his own death in the Trojan War.

Homer tells how:

‘In tears’ the mourners ‘gathered their gentle comrade’s white bones,

All in a golden urn, sealed with a double fold of fat,

And stowed the urn in his shelter, covered well

With a light...

Anyhow, why am I on about relics this morning? Other than the obvious spiritual good pondering them does, I was struck by the last line of the Gospel today, “…they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”

There was something about even touching the hem of his cloak that brought healing and wholeness. The garment wasn’t magical. It was not as if he had case some dweomer over it and made it radiate healing powers.

But by its nearness to him, it achieved some new property, it found some way of being a source of restoration.

I suppose this is where I loop back to relics. Not because of the obvious parallel which is that an object held by someone becomes somehow imbued with new power.

It is that by their nearness to Christ, to the source of healing and hope, the Saints and martyrs themselves became relics in the best sense of the word. They became a conduit by which the healing light of Jesus could pour into dark and lonely places. Their nearness to him gave them some new power which was his, alive and made present, by their faithful closeness to him.

Most of us resent being called relics! However, I think there’s a good deal of beauty in considering all of us, our selves, souls, and bodies, to be a conduit for the love of Christ. Each of us has the potential to let someone see his healing, forgiving, restoring love in us and through us.

So here’s to striving to be called relics — especially for the right reasons!

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert