You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello everyone, and welcome to a little mini series within Catholic saints, where we are talking about saints, we're talking about angels and then other things related to saints and angels. Today we are talking about relics. My name is Taylor Camp. I'm the director. Formed and with me is Dr. Elizabeth Klein. Dr. Klein, we're on a roll.

Thanks for having me. I love relics. It's great to have you.

I'm glad you like relics. What is a relic? So the word relic comes from the Latin word reliqua,

which just means remains or things that are left behind. So relics are things that are left behind by our beloved dead.

And so the idea of kind of the left behind things of our beloved dead, I think has a kind of

broad psychological appeal beyond specifically Catholic things.

So like your grandma leaves behind her favorite teacup that you used to drink out of when

you were a little kid or you have a particular

object left behind by a family member that's that's very special to you often they're like

really random and weird and not necessarily the kinds of things you would expect to be attached to

and so this is also true for um the saints for people the holy people and the things that they have left behind, have become

sort of objects of affection and veneration in the church.

And so there are, it's important to know that this is like a biblical phenomenon, the idea

of like remains being important.

I mean, in general, the burial place of saints or lack

thereof is often mentioned. You know it's mentioned that nobody knows where Moses is buried

or where this person is buried. Two kind of like specific relic examples are the in second

Kings 13 the bones of Elisha bring a man back to life. So there's like an invading army and

someone like falls into the place where Elisha was buried and touches the bones and comes back to life.

Another example comes from Acts, Acts 19, where it says the handkerchiefs and aprons.

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