You're listening to the SSPX podcast. We're happy to present another installment of true heroes.

Stories of the lives of the saints, delivered by Father Thomas Tam.

Father is also put together a video of each of these episodes. You can see the video at

SSPX Podcast.com. Now here's Father Tam. Nails were not enough to hold God, had not love held him there. St. Catherine of Siena.

Hello, my friends, and welcome to Relics of Christendom.

Today we're going to talk about the nails with which our Lord was kept to the cross,

and what little we know about them after their use in his crucifixion.

Let us begin our story.

There are no less than 30 claims to being the true nails of Christ,

but we will focus on three that certainly have a better claim than the others,

but before we get into that, let us review what we know.

Our first podcast on relics was that of the true cross, and the history of the nails starts the same way.

St. Helena came to Jerusalem to seek out the cross our Lord was crucified on.

At the time of her discovery of the cross, St. Helena also found the nails and the crown of thorns.

As she brought a part of the cross home, she did as well with the nails of Christ.

Tradition says that she took two of the nails and put

them into the helmet and the bridle of the horse of her son, Emperor Constantine, to help

protect her son. The third was left as a nail and kept in her private chapel.

So now let's look at what are certainly the three most reliable claims to being the nails of Christ. We firstly have what is called the Holy Cross nail.

It is located in the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem in Rome.

And you'd be like, wait, what do you mean by that? So it was consecrated in 325 with a floor that

included soil from the Holy Land. So the name in Jerusalem refers not to the cross, but to the basilica itself, which was

...