Sacred Catholic relics and Healing Power

[Berserk]

Most evangelicals are blissfully ignorant of how informed Catholics find biblical support for Catholic distinctives in Scripture: e. g. praying to saints. Purgatory, baptism, the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements, the use of holy water, the biblical authority of priests to forgive sins, apostolic succession, and the way of salvation. Most evangelicals prefer to bypass the need for honest apologetic engagement and instead slothfully dismiss these distinctives as later man-made Catholic traditions with no biblical support. In doing so, they seek shelter in a nmyopic fundamentalist thought Ghetto anchored to a skewed and biased selection of convenient but misinterpreted prooftexts that blind them to the divine summons to engage fellow believers with different biblical perspectives in honest and open inquiry.

This blindness is especially evident in the widespread evangelical disdain for Catholic holy relics such as the bones of deceased saints and martyrs and, of course, the Shroud of Turin. Surely honesty requires a passionate desire to know whether the precious shed blood of Jesus that redeems us is actually present on the Shroud! To holy relics one might add the healing power of sacred springs such as those at the shrines of Lourdes and the Virgin Mary's house at Ephesus. This thread is intended to focus on such holy relics. So let me begin with this challenge to fundamentalists. What biblical warrant might an informed Catholic cite for the spiritual power of holy relics and healing springs? I eagerly await your answer before continuing the discussion.

 

[2nd Timothy Group]

Most evangelicals are blissfully ignorant of how informed Catholics find biblical support for Catholic distinctives in Scripture: e. g. praying to saints. Purgatory, baptism, the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements, the use of holy water, the biblical authority of priests to forgive sins, apostolic succession, and the way of salvation. Most evangelicals prefer to bypass the need for honest apologetic engagement and instead slothfully dismiss these distinctives as later man-made Catholic traditions with no biblical support. In doing so, they seek shelter in a nmyopic fundamentalist thought Ghetto anchored to a skewed and biased selection of convenient but misinterpreted prooftexts that blind them to the divine summons to engage fellow believers with different biblical perspectives in honest and open inquiry.

This blindness is especially evident in the widespread evangelical disdain for Catholic holy relics such as the bones of deceased saints and martyrs and, of course, the Shroud of Turin. Surely honesty requires a passionate desire to know whether the precious shed blood of Jesus that redeems us is actually present on the Shroud! To holy relics, one might add the healing power of sacred springs such as those at the shrines of Lourdes and the Virgin Mary's house at Ephesus. This thread is intended to focus on such holy relics. So let me begin with this challenge to fundamentalists. What biblical warrant might an informed Catholic cite for the spiritual power of holy relics and healing springs? I eagerly await your answer before continuing the discussion.

I belong to The Way, not really Christianity . . . so I appreciate your post. John chapter 9 deals with the blind man, born that way from birth, who is told by Christ to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. It was in that pool that the blind man was washed and made Clean. As for relics, off the top of my head, I can't think of anything in the New Testament (I appreciate this challenge . . . have I said that yet? )

The Old Testament speaks of Holy items, where if a person touched them, that person would be made Holy (I think . . . I'm just going off of memory, here.)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to understand what you believe, and why you believe it. I love to hear what others believe and have to say. Grazie!

 

[Mungo]

I belong to The Way, not really Christianity . . . so I appreciate your post. John chapter 9 deals with the blind man, born that way from birth, who is told by Christ to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. It was in that pool that the blind man was washed and made Clean. As for relics, off the top of my head, I can't think of anything in the New Testament (I appreciate this challenge . . . have I said that yet? )

The Old Testament speaks of Holy items, where if a person touched them, that person would be made Holy (I think . . . I'm just going off of memory, here.)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to understand what you believe, and why you believe it. I love to hear what others believe and have to say. Grazie!

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.

 

[2nd Timothy Group]

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.

Wow, that's right! Good one! (The smile on my face is touching the bottom of each ear.)

 

[marks]

This thread is intended to focus on such holy relics.

Hi Berserk,

Regarding the efficacy of holy relics and holy sites, my thinking on this is that God can certainly work through all of these, and requires none of them.

The man who washed in the pool, healings with hankies, the bones of Elisha, these are well attested.

The bones of Elisha . . . when Elijah was taken to heaven, Elisha said he wanted a double portion of the Spirit that was on Elijah, confirmed in seeing him go up. Scripture goes on to record exactly twice the miracles for Elisha as Elijah. Except, of course, that Elisha raised one person from the dead during his life.

One of my favorite places in the Bible to visualize is when the fellows toss their buddy into Elisha's grave, and up he pops alive! The second resurrection, from beyond the grave! Well, not really. From the grave itself.

So here's my question.

Would Elisha's bones revive anyone whom they touch? Is the power in the bones?

I'm thinking that the real power is in God, and we receive it by faith. Was there faith in the man who was tossed onto Elisha's bones? I don't think so.

God can do whatever He wants.

I think He can heal as we trust Him for healing and dip into a spring. Same God, same faith.

Overall, my thinking on holy relics is that the focus can be drawn away from God and onto the relic, depending on how someone thinks about it.

God one time used the reading of a Psalm to enact a dramatic change in me. This was a mental/emotional healing, calling it dramatic doesn't even scratch the surface!

But I can't say, if you want this change, read that Psalm. This was something God chose to do.

Are there people who move from this relic to that relic, from this pool to that spring, seeking for something that they don't receive? That fellow was healed by touching That. I need to touch That so I can be healed. This is what concerns me with holy relics and sites as they relate to healing.

Much love!

 

[Berserk]

Thanks for your replies. Yes marks, the Catholic belief in healing through relics, the bones of saints, is traceable to 2 Kings 13:20-21 (Elisha's bones). Please read this short article that documents how God has used relics (the bones of saints and martyrs, especially of Stephen. the first Christian martyr0 to perform healing miracles such as restoring the sight of the blind:

Augustine and the Power of Relics

What renewed my fascination with this topic is a testimony from a member of this site on how God healed his wife of congestive heart failure. When his prayers for her healing were of no avail, he asked a prayer group to pray for her. When that didn't work, he went to the tomb of a saint in Italy, touched it reverently, prayed for her healing, and secured the miracle! I don't recall who posted this testimony and I will try to track it down.

I was reminded of my friend Dick who visited the house of the Virgin Mary at Ephesus. He made this trip despite torn ligaments and bad arthritis in his knee. When a Turkish lady saw him limping badly, she recommended that he bottle some water from the nearby spigot that drew water from Mary's healing spring. Dick did so just to be polite and returned to his hotel. Seeing his pain, his wife Mary Ann urged him to pour the water on his knee, but Dick protested, "Why, it's just water; it won't make a difference." She replied, "But what do you have to lose?" So he poured the Marian water just to get Mary Ann off his back. He felt better, but attributed this to the placebo effect.

When he returned from his vacation, he was immediately scheduled for surgery by the top orthopedic surgeon in Spokane. While Dick was recovering from the anesthesia, he saw his surgeon at the foot of the bed, looking rather pale. The surgeon said, 'I don't understand it; we had MRIs on your knee, but when we cut you open, your knee was perfectly normal and even your arthritis was gone!"

I'm not Catholic; I'm a member of a weekly evangelical prayer group. We have witnessed some marvelous healings and other answers to prayer, but I am often haunted by some of our apparently unanswered prayers. I view the overhasty thought, "It must not have been God's will," as a cop-out that might mask deficiencies in my faith and approach to prayer. So I have been obsessed with the question of unknown laws of consciousness, faith, and effective prayer that might make our prayer ministry more effective and I'm eager to learn from out of the box methods of Christian healing.