Catholic Saints – This Catholic Family: Catholic Womanhood, Family, and Conversion

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I am over seven years past my Catholic confirmation, and I did not really know much or think much about the relics of the Saints until recently. JP and I had been listening to The Exorcist Files, a great podcast that is engaging catechesis on the experiences of an official Catholic exorcist and the theology behind spiritual warfare and the demonic. The Priest, Fr. Carlos Martins, is also known as “The Relic Guy,” and in one episode, he shared how the relics of the Saints can be a useful tool in combating demons as they can cause demons considerable distress.

This prompted me to want to learn more about relics!

What Are Relics?

In brief, a relic of a Saint is either part of a Saint’s body, or something they owned, or something they touched. There are three degrees of relics:

1st Class Relics: These are parts of the body of a Saint (bone or flesh, for example)

2nd Class Relics: These are possessions that the Saint owned.

3rd Class Relics: These are objects that have been touched to a first or second class relic, or they can be objects that the Saint touched.

An interesting tidbit is that every Catholic church should have at least one relic inside the main altar! Might be worth checking with your local parish Priest to see if he knows whose relic your parish has.

Biblical References to Relics

I was also very interested to learn that there are many examples of relics being objects that God uses for His glory in several instances of the Bible. In 2nd Kings 13:20-21, we see a man being buried. He is cast into the grave of Elisha and upon touching Elisha’s bones (a first class relic), the man revives.

In Acts 5:15-16, people go out onto the streets hoping that even Paul’s shadow will fall upon them so they can be healed.

In Acts 19:11-12, handkerchiefs and aprons that Paul had touched (3rd class relic) were taken off to people who were sick or possessed and they were healed.

There are others, but even those three passages show us that God sometimes uses relics as a tool in healings. The relics themselves are not magical, nor do they have any power on their own, God is the one who heals, but his grace can reach us through the Saints in a mysterious way.

How We Ended Up With A Relic of St. Anthony

My kids love to bring home items from the “Free to Take” table at our parish. This often means we’re coming home with prayer cards, or pictures of the Divine Mercy, or little trinkets from religious organizations that send out things in the mail. One day this summer, I was rifling through a drawer in our kitchen that contained many items from the “Free to Take” table, and I found a relic of St. Anthony preserved inside a metal frame!

Imagine my surprise! Now, the relic is a very small piece of fabric, and is very likely a 3rd class relic- something that has been touched to a first or 2nd class relic, but it’s still really cool! We ask St. Anthony for prayers to God for things that we’ve lost pretty often, so it seems especially fitting that I “found” this relic that was right under our noses for a while!

Do Relics Matter?

At the end of the day, any healing or good that comes to us in this world is from God, but I do think it’s pretty awesome that God uses holy men and women, and even sometimes the objects that they owned or touched, to be a vessel for His grace. It’s another way to take something spiritual and to connect it with our tangible experience here on earth. Remembering the Saints and their lives and how they followed God so closely is becoming more and more of an inspiration to me as time goes on.

-Lorelei

I thought the most difficult thing for me to navigate as a convert would be the Church’s devotion to Mary. But by the time all my other theological questions and been answered and misconceptions set aright, assenting to the Church’s relationship with Mary was much easier than I thought.

It turned out that the hesitation that lingered the longest was my relationship with the saints. I understood the good in honoring them and respecting them and asking them for prayers. But there was part of me that was quite intimidated by these Holy men and women, people who had done something that seemed so remote and unattainable. I was intimidated to the point that it took a couple of years past my Confirmation before I even read a complete book of writings by Saint Teresa of Calcutta, my confirmation saint.

The sense of intimidation has faded over time, and my interest in and gratitude for the saints has increased. These days I find myself frequently asking for their prayers and pondering their words and their lives in a way that buoys up my faith.

And so, it felt like an important step for our family when we learned that the relics of Saint Thérèse and her parents Saints Zélie and Louis Martin would be visiting the National Shrine and Museum of Saint Thérèse for a couple of weeks, just an hour from our home. Especially since our youngest daughter is named Zelie.

We arrived as the reliquary of Saints Zélie and Louis Martin were being carried from on building to another, and we all immediately could tell that this was going to be a special experience.

There was a deep reverence throughout the church and museum, among all the pilgrims who had come to draw near. We learned that the reliquaries held the bones of this family of saints, and we touched the glass and prayed beside them.

Saints Zélie and Louis Martin are particularly special to our family because of their witness in marriage and because of the way they raised their children to love the Lord. We asked for their prayers for the grace to follow in their footsteps.

Another thing I noted, that particularly stood out to me as a convert, was that relics are another gift of the faith that we can experience tangibly. I fell in love with the Sacraments as I converted, the fact that we can taste the Eucharist, that we can feel the waters of Baptism, that we can hear God’s forgiveness in Confession. My Christianity moved from intangible to being something I could experience with my mind, my soul, and my body as well.

Click to tweet:
Relics are another gift of the faith that we can experience tangibly. #CatholicMom

It is easy to be disappointed in ourselves when we continually fall short of living our faith fully. It is easy to feel disillusioned with the Church when the people within it disappoint us, sometimes deeply. But in the relics we have real, tangible evidence of people who have done it, who have let God’s love in so fully that there wasn’t room for anything else. Being close to the relics of Saint Thérèse and her parents reminded me that it can be done, that it has been done, that we are not alone in the journey toward heaven.

All the disappointments in ourselves or others faded and our whole family left reminded and encouraged that we are not alone, and that we have a heavenly family praying for us and encouraging us along the way.