Sydney
14 April 2002
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Opinion: Relics – veneration of God’s transforming grace
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Opinion: Relics – veneration of God’s transforming grace
St Thérèse’s relics
By David Ranson
The use of relics has had a chequered history in the Catholic tradition. We are well aware that sometimes their use has been less than noble.
Nonetheless, notwithstanding the historical distortions, the Church recognises the significance of such a practice.
In the current Catechism we read:
“Besides sacramental liturgy and sacramentals, catechesis must take into account the forms of piety and popular devotions among the faithful.
“The religious sense of the Christian people has always found expression in various forms of piety surrounding the Church’s sacramental life, such as the veneration of relics, visits to sanctuaries, pilgrimages, processions, the stations of the cross, religious dances, the rosary, medals, etc” (n 1674).
The presence of the reliquary of St Thérèse of Lisieux in Australia provides us with a worthwhile opportunity to reflect on why such an expression of piety continues to have an important place in our ecclesial and spiritual life.
Again, the Catechism provides us with an answer to this question, quoting from the 1979 Latin American Bishops’ Conference in Puebla: “At its core the piety of the people is a storehouse of values that offers answers of Christian wisdom to the great questions of life.
“The Catholic wisdom of the people is capable of fashioning a vital synthesis … It creatively combines the divine and the human, Christ and Mary, spirit and body, communion and institution, person and community, faith and homeland, intelligence and emotion.
“This wisdom is a Christian humanism that radically affirms the dignity of every person as a child of God, establishes a basic fraternity, teaches people to encounter nature and understand work, provides reasons for joy and humour even in the midst of a very hard life.
“For the people this wisdom is also a principle of discernment and an evangelical instinct through which they spontaneously sense when the Gospel is served in the Church, and when it is emptied of its content and stifled by other interests” (n1676) [italics mine].
The Catechism is suggesting that ‘popular’ Christian instinct, therefore, acts as a kind of spiritual barometer. People generate an interest in practices of piety either because they recognise the gesture as instrumental of the gospel or because the ordinary means of encounter with Jesus have become so obscured that the religious imagination spontaneously seeks out new avenues to express the human need of transcendence.
In either case, practices of piety, such as the veneration of relics, kindle the religious imagination.
They take us out of a simply cerebral approach to our faith and engender it with warmth and humanity. Significantly, they ‘embody’ and incarnate faith within particular cultural frameworks.
The Catechism, however, emphasises that, at all times, it is Jesus and the Gospel, especially within the liturgical setting, to which we must be directed in the practice of popular piety.
Within the Christian tradition, holy persons are not remembered for their own sake but for the way in which they have mirrored the transforming grace of the gospel in their particular circumstances.
Within this guiding context, the memory of such persons has always been an important part of our Catholic tradition.
In the veneration of those we now call ‘saints’ we have recognised the touch and the power of Christ.
We recognise, in different ways, how the paschal mystery transforms the lives of people.
We celebrate the beauty that is fashioned in a life given over to the Mystery of God’s incomprehensible graciousness. In recollecting all this, we ourselves are touched; we are inspired; we are encouraged or challenged in our own journey of transformation in Christ.
Memory, generally, is an essential and powerful faculty in the religious imagination. We ‘remember’ and we, ourselves, are changed in what we bring to mind.
Our memory, however, needs to be nourished.
It requires something tangible to be cultivated; otherwise our memories become vague and no longer have power for us.
Just as our own personal photos of our deceased work to continue to keep their memory alive, so does a relic of a special person in our Christian community work to maintain their memory.
A relic is an aid to religious memory. It helps us remember the person and their story.
The person and their story help us remember the possibility of God’s work in us, the promise of Jesus himself.
In the end, of course, it is not the relic that is venerated.
Nor is it the person whose relic we have who is venerated.
Ultimately, it is God’s transforming grace that is venerated.
May the memory of Thérèse of Lisieux, sparked and nourished by tangible signs of her life, bring us to a celebration of the mystery in which she, and all of us, are embraced.
May our memory of her lead us to remember the story of Jesus’ invitation to discover in the midst of life, even in all its ordinariness and obscurity, the hint of an enchanted infinity characterised by love.
David Ranson is lecturer in Spirituality, Catholic Institute of Sydney