It is no surprise that in [St. John Damascene's] other masterpiece, On the Orthodox Faith
, this eighth-century apologist gives us a beautiful defense of saints’
relics based on the fact that “through their minds God has also dwelt
in their bodies.”
What’s the common thread uniting icons and relics? It is that God has sanctified stuff
— matter, as we call it — and has chosen to give us divine assistance
through its use. In his defense of relics, St. John goes on to cite the
same passage from First Corinthians that the fathers of the Council of
Trent did, in this excerpt from the Council’s 25th session:
“the holy bodies of holy martyrs and of others now living with Christ —
which bodies were the living members of Christ and ‘the temple of the
Holy Ghost’ (I Cor., vi, 19), and which are by Him to be raised to
eternal life and to be glorified, are to be venerated by the faithful85”
Like St. John, who points out miracles worked through the relics of
the saints, the Council goes on to state a reason why the relics are to
be honored: “for through these [bodies] many benefits are bestowed by
God on men85” The fact that relics were used by God to bestow benefits
on men is clearly to be seen in the inspired history of the Bible.
In the Fourth Book of Kings (or Second Kings, in Protestant Bibles),
the story is told of Elias (Elijah) the Prophet being taken up to heaven
in a fiery chariot. Eliseus (Elisha) the Prophet, who inherited his
spiritual father’s “double spirit” — the legal prerogatives of firstborn
son — took up the mantle of Elias which had fallen in the violence of
the whirlwind. “And he took up the mantle of Elias, that fell from him:
and going back, he stood on the bank of the Jordan; and he struck the
waters with the mantle of Elias, that had fallen from him, and they were
not divided. And he said: Where is now the God of Elias? And he struck
the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, and Eliseus passed
over” (4 Kings 2:13-14 / KJV: 2 Kings 2:13-14 ).
Elias had, previous to his being taken up, worked the same miracle
using his mantle (2:8). This is how the two prophets ended up on the
side of the Jordan they were on when the fiery chariot came. After
Elias’ prodigious departure, the relic of his mantle became Eliseus’
“passport” to get back to the other side. Here is a concrete instance of
God bestowing a benefit on men through a relic.
The next Old Testament relic apologetic also involves Eliseus. Here,
the relic is not a garment, but the prophet’s dead body: “And Eliseus
died, and they buried him. And the rovers from Moab came into the land
the same year. And some that were burying a man, saw the rovers, and
cast the body into the sepulchre of Eliseus. And when it had touched the
bones of Eliseus, the man came to life and stood upon his feet” (4 [KJV:2] Kings 13:20-21).
There is no denying that the inspired history relates a
cause-and-effect relationship between the dead man’s body touching the
corpse of Eliseus, and that man’s resurrection.
Before proceeding to the New Testament, we cite one more B.C. proof:
God chose to work many and great miracles through the Ark of the
Covenant. What did the Ark contain? Relics. In it were found the tablets
of the Law, the Rod of Aaron, and a jar of manna from the Israelites’
wandering in the desert. (Read more.)