Early in my professional life I spent some ten years or so working in the National Museum in Warsaw. There, unknown even to myself, I developed craving for physical contact with beautiful historical objects. It comes and goes, but it is there. Since desire for contact with say, medieval art, cannot be quite well satisfied in Western Canada, whenever my “museum hunger” hits me, I go to the Edmonton Antique Mall where a wide assortment of furniture, décor and knick-knacks dating back to “as far as” hmm… 19th century… can be found.
The communion of saints
Some time ago a friend prompted me that there are some absolutely unusual items in the Mall. Soon I was browsing through small artefacts’ cabinet filled with assortment of silver spoons, bone china cups and yellowed crocheted napkins.
There I came upon a small metal container with glass top and red seal on its other side. At the bottom of the container, against a white background ran a handwritten script – ex ossibus…than the name.. In the middle a chip of something..
It took me a while before I realised that I am loking at the 1st class ( fragment of a bone) relic of Pope Gegory the Great. It was old, beautifully framed and had all proper signs of authenticity – as far as I could tell anyway, not being much of an expert in relics.
I was standing there, holding this oval reliquary, astounded. Such relics have always been treasured in the Church, they belong to the altars and churches, where all the living can reach out for help to those who had been tested and had not been found wanting.
As everything in the Church the communion of saints has its concrete dimensions.
In realm of faith there are no accidents. I was meeting, or was being visited here by the great saint, one of the greatest popes – and realisation of this took my breath away.
Gregory the Great, 6th century Roman patrician, monk and pope reminds me of John Paul the 2nd with his amazing ability to understand the needs of laity without compromising demands of faith. Both of them were chosen to serve when the world stood at the crossroads. Both served with passion, until the last breath. Both led the world to Christ.
Gregory had been a prefect of Rome at the age of 32, then a monk and finally pope ( for several years only). He lived in times of the final downfall of the Roman Empire, the difficult age between the Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. His century was marked with plagues and famines and barbarian invasions. In many parts of the Empire one third of the population vanished. Refugees from multiple invasions fled to Rome, capital no longer. The city itself, once a powerful centre of the Empire, was depopulated and much shrunk, its ancient imperial palaces in ruins, pagan temples standing abandoned, famous buildings neglected, aqueducts mostly broken. Pope Gregory successfully negotiated with the invading barbarians, created impressive alms giving system based on donations ( including his own) and increased productivity of Church estates. He fed the poor and refugees regularly and made sure those who were unable to cook food themselves, received their meals prepared. Some of the poor ate at his own table daily and he served them himself. And he prayed, oh, how he did pray! The Gregorian Chants and the Gregorian Masses are not called “Gregorian” for nothing.
Few of us, living in the West, remember that it was Gregory the Great who sent missions to Anglo-Saxon England which led to later conversion of Netherlands and Germany and then the lands beyond Germany, too. Most of Europe owes its Christian roots to Saint Gregory the Great.
“The greatest among you must be your servant”
Pope Gregory the Great was also the first pope to officially described himself as a “servus servorum” – “servant of the servants” of God. In case of saints it has always meant total abandonment of self on behalf of others so that they do not lack God or bread. The sacrifice is made always for the sake of Love.
The word “service” in present day English is about as badly abused as “love”. Just as we “love” practically everything and anything, from sweet fluffy kittens to new smartphone apps, so do we enjoy (or provide) “services”. These “services” range from electricity and water to fixing computers to the, so called “reproduction services” (which in plain language mean “contraception and abortion”) and ending with the infamous “assisted dying”.
Strangely, the related word “servant” is far less popular. Even the term “public servant” is far less used than before. One of my young friends tried to explain this phenomenon – “servant is someone lower than you, less important, someone who obeys”. Then she added “ if you are a servant, you cannot be a leader” and “you know how important are leadership skills”.
We live in confused world
All saints served others, this way or the other. They were not “providing services”, they sought the menial tasks, humble tasks out of love. They were servants of others. St John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church and mystic, worked as a nurse in the convent infirmary. There is no doubt that as part of his duties he carried out bedpans, wiped off vomit and washed sweaty, smelly bodies. There is also no doubt that he did it all with love – he saw Jesus in each of the sick.
There is no CV that can get us “position” in Heaven but the one that has “servant” as all past job descriptions in it.
The saint comes from Netherlands to Western Canada
I could not leave the small container, so full of holiness and history in the Mall, lying there among those silver spoons. As I found out, it came from a church in Netherlands. Quite a few of the Catholic churches have been closed there since 1972 and their contents are sold through a firm created for this purpose. It is still functioning and its name is “Fluminalis”.
Chalices, altars, beautifully carved statues, confessionals and also multiple reliquaries are there on sale.. some, if one is to believe the original documentation included with them, containing fragments of True Cross, countless bones or even heart tissue of great saints.
Shouldn’t these treasures be given free of charge to the young parishes in Africa, India, Korea and Vietnam – with fervent request to pray to God for Europe? It is such a shocking lack of gratitude to see bones of the greatest saints on SALE… on line.
As for the relic of St Gregory the Great that travelled to Edmonton – all is well. We have here in our Archdiocese a young, humble and extremely hard working bishop Gregory Bittman. He is one of those bishops who avoid the “first places” and the “first seats”, who “preach and practice what they preach”. He serves. To him went my treasure and he rejoiced in it.
I have a feeling that the great saint and the 21st century Canadian bishop are happy together.
Maria Kozakiewicz