A display of faith.

It's the custom of my parish to display its extensive collection of relics in the sanctuary every All Saints Day. Each reliquary is tenderly placed on its own Ionic plaster pillar, draped in gold lame, and labeled with a neat place card. I think it's our custom of treating the dead like next-door neighbors temporarily on vacation that gives those who aren't Catholic the grue about relics.

As a post-Vatican II convert, I confess to a touch of the grue myself on occasion. A tasteful fragment of bone in a reliquary I don't mind, but I draw the line at entire body parts: Saint Anthony's tongue, Catherine of Siena's head (which is in Siena, Italy, the rest of her is in Rome), or Teresa of Avila's sinewy arm. The whole topic of the incorruptibles leaves me cold (no pun intended).

There is an undeniable tension when discussing relics in the post-Vatican II church. But all 20th-century ambiguity and gallows humor aside, I must confess I've come around to relics. Cautiously.

The Catholic Church defines relics as the remains of a saint or holy person. First-class relics are saints' bodies and instruments of the Passion. Second-class relics are objects in close contact with a saint - clothing or instruments of martyrdom. Third-class relics are objects touched to first- or second-class relics. Miracles or favors are commonly attributed to relics.

Relics go back to the very early church. Acts 19:11-12 notes "God worked extraordinary miracles at the hands of Paul. When handkerchiefs or cloths which had touched his skin were applied to the sick, their diseases were cured and evil spirits departed from them."

The early church venerated martyrs through their remains by tomb liturgies. After the martyrdom of Saint Polycarp in 156, a follower "took up his bones which are more valuable than precious stones ... and laid them in a suitable place where the Lord will permit us to gather together in gladness and joy and to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom." The early church leaders attributed graces to relics. By the 10th century, relics were distributed worldwide and placed in shrines and churches that became centers of pilgrimage. Unfortunately tussles over highly sought after saints' remains and the sale of fraudulent relics cast a shadow over the tradition.

Saint Jerome explained the principle of relics: "We do not worship, we do not adore for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore Him whose martyrs they are."

Perhaps the Catholic passion for the actual presence of the divine helps to explain the tradition of relics. When we care for someone, we long to be close to that person. Modern pilgrims stream through the Divine Providence Hospital chapel where Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot while saying Mass on March 24, 1980. Many feel closer to El Salvador's advocate of justice when they kneel at the spot where he shed his blood.

Sometimes it's a purely practical care for the dead, as when Margaret More Roper rescued the head of her martyred father, Saint Thomas More, from a pike on London bridge one dark night. Or it may be the desire to rescue a beloved person from annihilation by his or her enemies. When Jesuit Blessed Edmund Campion was hanged, drawn, and quartered by English Protestants in 1581, a follower soaked his handkerchief in Campion's blood and was himself executed as a result.

Simply put, saints are our extended family. And who does not cherish a memento or visit the grave of family? Relics are a logical extension of that instinct to cherish one's relationship with the deceased. The entire plot of the 1953 movie "The Robe" centered around the struggle to save the cloak of Jesus.

But all debate aside, I've come to respect relics because of a personal experience. A few years ago someone close to me suffered a heart attack the week of All Saints Day. Frantic with worry, I knelt before the relics displayed at my parish and prayed. A relic of Saint Camillus de Lellis - patron of hospitals, nurses, and the sick - caught my eye. As I prayed to Saint Camillus, I felt the most overwhelming desire to go up and touch the reliquary. This impulse, combined with the strong feeling of his presence, shook my smug post-Vatican II soul. The crisis of illness passed, but the memory of that sense of presence remains. Maybe I need to examine a tradition more closely before blithely dismissing it as pre-Vatican II. Perhaps, as Hamlet said, there is more in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our (admittedly subjective) philosophies.