Catholic teaching
What are relics?
Relics are sacred physical connections to the saints: the holy men and women whose lives were transformed by Jesus Christ. Catholics do not worship relics. We venerate them as signs of God’s grace at work in His friends, and as reminders that holiness involves the whole person, body and soul.
Relics and the communion of saints
Relics point the heart back to Christ.
In Catholic devotion, relics are honored because the saints belong to Christ. Their bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit, their hands served the poor, their voices preached the Gospel, their sufferings were united to the Cross, and their lives became visible witnesses of grace. A relic is never treated as a magical object or as something separate from God. It is a concrete reminder that the Lord sanctifies real human lives and continues to draw His people into prayer, conversion, courage, repentance, and love.
When a prayer intention is placed near relics, the meaning is not that the relic itself answers the prayer. The prayer is directed to God. The saints are asked to intercede before Our Lord Jesus Christ, just as Christians on earth ask one another for prayer. The relic table becomes a reverent place of remembrance, petition, and thanksgiving within the communion of saints.
Kinds of relics
The traditional classes of relics
Part of the body of a saint, such as bone or hair, reverently preserved by the Church.
An item used or worn by a saint during life, such as clothing, a rosary, a book, or another personal object.
An object touched to a first- or second-class relic, kept as a devotional reminder and aid to prayer.
Scriptural roots
Relics have deep roots in Scripture.
Scripture shows that God can work through material things without those things becoming idols. In 2 Kings 13:21, a man is restored to life after contact with the bones of the prophet Elisha. In Acts 19:11–12, cloths associated with St. Paul are carried to the sick, and healings take place. In the Gospels, the sick seek even to touch the fringe of Christ’s garment, not because cloth is worshiped, but because faith reaches toward the power of God.
These passages do not make relics the center of faith. Christ remains the center. They show that Catholic reverence for relics belongs to a biblical vision in which God uses creation, bodies, places, and signs to draw His people closer to Him.
How to pray
How to approach relics prayerfully
A Catholic approach to relics should be humble, Christ-centered, and reverent. A person may thank God for the life of the saint, ask the saint’s intercession, entrust a need to Our Lord, and pray for the grace to imitate that saint’s virtues. The purpose is not curiosity or superstition, but deeper faith, repentance, healing, perseverance, and love of God.
The Chasing Saints relic table exists for this purpose: to receive private intentions, remember them reverently in prayer, and ask the saints to intercede before Christ for those who are suffering, grieving, seeking conversion, praying for family, asking for healing, or giving thanks for graces received.