Fr. Hunwicke offers an historical and contemporary
reflection on holy relics as we continue this month to remember those who have gone before
us in faith.
I rejoice in the facility of offering the Holy Sacrifice on
an Altar sealed with Relics; it is a relief to be able to be ecumenical, to
conform to the consensus of the Latin West and the Byzantine East, that one
should sacrifice over, as it were, the tombs of the martyrs. If a custom was
good enough for the shell-shocked Church which in the fourth century emerged,
metaphorically, from the catacombs with an overwhelming sense of being
surrounded and supported by a great crowd of witnesses, martyres, then that
custom is good enough for me. Even if the post-conciliar Church has gone a bit
soggy on relics. I commend to those whose breviaries contain the old Appendix
pro aliquibus locis the fine collect and the superb reading from S John
Damascene they will find on November 5.
Not that the veneration of relics is as late as the fourth
century. The contemporary account of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, the disciple
of St. John, embodied in the Encyclical which his Church at Smyrna sent to
the Catholic world in the middle of the
second century, links the desire of the faithful for his relics with the
doctrine of the Communio Sanctorum, the Communion of Saints: "they hoped
to koinonesai* with his holy flesh". So, although the hatred of the local
Jewish community drove the Romans to burn his body, his people gathered up even
the ashes and placed them where they could meet for Mass annually on the
genethlion* of his martyrion*, for a mneme* of those who had proathlekoton* and
the askesis* and preparation of those who were going to bear witness.
Most immediately pre-conciliar local calendars made today,
November 5, the Feast of the Holy Relics; according to Sarum it was on the
Sunday after the Translation of St. Thomas, i.e. in July; at Exeter on the Monday
after Ascension Day.
Greek key: *share fellowship with; *birthday; *act of
witness=martyrdom; *monument; *previously competed as athletes [a regular term
for martyrdom]; *training. [I cannot restrain myself from two catty comments:
that the current post-conciliar Roman regulations do not permit the use within
altars of such relics as the tiny fragments gathered up by those who loved S
Polycarp; and that, for sola Scriptura people, Acts 19:12 appears to encourage
the use of Secondary Relics; and II Kings 13:21 the use of Primary Relics.]
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