Sadly that was not on my Calender I bought from Walmart so I almost missed it. These pictures are not as quite as shocking to the senses as the ones I saw on Bone Chapels. EVERY DIOCESE NEEDS ONE!!! If one has a Bone Chapel I suspect Orthodoxy is at a high demand in your Diocese. Not saying I am signing up to be a future witness/exhibit for such a thing at the Dicesee of Shreveport Bone Chapel :)
Still it brings up topics such as the Last Things, Saints, and all that relic stuff that is so misunderstood.
Shrine of the Holy Wrapping has some great stuff at Disturbing Relics Week: The Patron Saint of Eye-Rolling , Disturbing Relics Week: "Cloister-Work" in Austria,, and It's Disturbing Relics Week at the Shrine! . It appears to be a week long event so be sure to check back!!
He says in one his of his posts:
Seriously, though, why are Catholics such packrats when it comes to the bones of the blessed? It's not just a stereotypical sense of the medievally morbid, but because we believe God can work His wonders through things physical--whether it be the sacramental grace of Holy Oil or a sick pilgrim immersed in the waters of Lourdes, or the mud Christ spat in when He cured the blind man, or the shadow of an apostle moving over the sick, or the hem of Jesus's cloak--because we believe the human body is more than just an inconvenient envelope for the soul, but a temple of the Holy Spirit, an integral part of our being that we will get back come the General Resurrection. Relics help us remember that heavenly reality.
Our separated brethren, who usually run away screaming from this sort of thing (okay, yes, I admit, St. Catherine of Bologna does look a bit like a haunted house exhibit after five-and-a-half centuries, but that's the occupational hazard of being a two-thousand year old church), might recall the great honor paid by the Jews to the bones of Moses, in spite of all their elaborate ritual-purity laws against touching corpses, not to mention the posthumous miracle wrought by Elisha's bones, which brought a corpse to life. Even the persecuted Christians of the catacomb era took great pains to preserve the relics of the martyrs, in the days when hanging on to such sacred souvenirs was something close to a death-sentence if discovered.
Holy Relic Week is contagious!!! Do you want to see St Ambrose? Yeah the big Church Father St Ambrose from way way way way back. Well this blogger has him right here at "Disturbing Relics Week"
Want to see St Augustine himself with of all people Pope Benedict the XVI.
Great in your Face Relics is not not a European Thing. America has got big ones too. Go see
St John Neumann in Philly GO ask your Priest what "Relic" you have in your Church's altar.
For more about Relics from a Apologetic point of view go see NO BONES ABOUT DEM BONES . David Armstrong has a great piece on the Biblical view of Relics
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