Relics of holy people are held in altars of many area churches

To honor the saints, some will look toward the heavens while others need only look toward a church altar.

A number of DuPage County churches are home to relics containing some remains of a saint or holy person. Others are objects made holy by contact with the saint's body.

"Relics are not magic. We revere them because they're the bodies of saints," said the Rev. Gerald Tivy of St. Joan of Arc Church in Lisle.

The Catholic Church does not teach that there is any miraculous power in the relic itself, but relics can be the occasion of God's miracles, as recorded in accounts of the infant church.

Consider this from Acts 19:11-12: "And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick; and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them."

Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox venerate relics because they are reminders of the saints and their lives.

"Relics connect us with the communion of saints," said the Rev. Joe Siegel of Visitation Church in Elmhurst, referring to the spiritual union of the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory and the saints in heaven in the mystical body of Christ.

Every third Tuesday of the month, a devotion is held at Visitation in honor of Saint Peregrine, the patron saint of those who suffer from cancer and other chronic or incurable diseases. The saint's relic is used to bless the sick.

"Relics make the faith tangible," Siegel said.

Veneration of relics dates back to the earliest years of the church, when the remains of martyrs were honored and their grave sites were deemed sacred.

Mass was celebrated over these sites, and eventually churches and altars were built to make the tribute permanent. There was an association between the martyr's and Christ's sacrifice.

As persecutions ended and Christianity spread, the classification of relics was expanded to include objects that had contact with a relic, since not all new churches could be built over a martyr's tomb.

There are three types of relics: a first-class relic is an actual piece of a saint's body, usually a bone; a second-class relic is an item used by the saint during his or her life; and a third-class relic is an object touched to either.

The spread of relics throughout the West was also facilitated by dividing relics into pieces. By the late 16th century, church law required relics for every altar. The relic was placed in a consecrated stone slab, called an altar stone, and then sealed into the altar.

This requirement remained in force until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. The practice of placing relics under the altar has continued in many churches, as Tivy has done at St. Joan of Arc in Lisle.

Tivy said guidelines today instruct that "relics should be large enough to be recognizable."

Through the glass panels of the 19th-century French Gothic reliquary, the container designed to hold relics at the Lisle church, one can view the bone relic of St. Ursula, a fourth-century martyr.

Among others, it holds a relic of St. Joan of Arc, the patroness of the parish, and one of Mother Cabrini, who died in Chicago in 1917.

Tivy added, "Relics must also be authenticated, because in the history of the church, some relics are in doubt."

To be sure, relic-mongers and charlatans exploited this doubt, and abuse of relics led Protestant reformers to criticize their commercialization. With a few centuries distance, observers today can take a more dispassionate view.

Timothy Larsen, the Carolyn and Fred McManis professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, said, "We know from the history of the church that unique objects not only separate people from where they believe God's presence and power can be, but also create great incentives for fraud and greed.

"On the positive side," he added, "I believe that God often uses tangible objects as a way of connecting people with himself and his power. Moreover, there is some biblical warrant for such objects being associated with particularly faithful or anointed servants of God (2 Kings 13:21; Acts 19:12).

"I think there is a deeply, perennial and appropriate human desire to connect the physical and the spiritual."

A visit to the National Shrine of St. Therese in Darien proves how much that desire is alive. The shrine honors the 19th-century French Carmelite nun, who was declared a "Doctor of the Church" by Pope John Paul II in 1992.

Brother Eric Bell, the Darien shrine's director, said, "The center has the best collection of St. Therese's relics outside of France."

These include first- and second-class relics. Many of St. Therese's personal and childhood effects are held at the shrine, including the chair where she wrote her autobiography, "Story of a Soul."

The relics were originally given to the shrine of St. Therese at St. Clara Church in Chicago in 1926 by St. Therese's own sister, Pauline, who by then had become Mother Agnes, Superior of the Lisieux Carmelites in France.

A larger collection still can be found in the Reliquary Chapel at St. Procopius Benedictine Abbey in Lisle.

The chapel is actually a small niche in the sacristy where the monks prepare for Mass and is not generally accessible to the public. Several dozen relics are displayed in a variety of reliquaries, both modern and antique.

The Rev. David Turner, a monk and priest, highlighted the relic of St. Procopius, the 11th -century Czech saint for whom the abbey was named. Just a sliver of bone, it rests in a small oval metal and glass case, labeled and decorated with crystals.

St. Procopius was the founding abbot of the abbey in Sázava near Prague, where the relic originated.

As Turner showed the relic, he pulled out a fragile document, and said, "This relic came with authentication from the abbot in Sázava, dated 1786."

Written in Latin, its red-wax seal certifies its authenticity.

Relics are often met with ambivalence, as they do not fit neatly into today's scientific approach to understanding the world. There is no ambivalence, however, for Betty Carr of Elmhurst, who has been attending Visitation's monthly devotion to St. Peregrine for almost 10 years.

"I went because I knew a lot of people who had chronic illness and I could carry the spiritual blessing to them.

"Then four years ago I was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer, and I started going for myself."

Today, cancer-free, Carr calls her healing, "miraculous."

She added, "The healing could have been through St. Peregrine's intercession."

Or it could be credited to her pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

"Some do receive physical healing," Carr said, "but the spiritual healing is what is most important."

If you go

What:Relics can be seen at the following churches in DuPage County:

• St. Joan of Arc Church, 820 Division St. Lisle; (630) 963-4500

• Visitation Parish, 779 S. York St., Elmhurst; (630) 834-6700

• National Shrine of St. Therese, 8501 Bailey Road, Darien; (630) 969-3311

• Reliquary Chapel at St. Procopius Benedictine Abbey in Lisle; (630) 969-6410