Pious Old Women

Today I was forced to think about two things that are kind of scandalous about being Catholic in 2013:

1. Relics.

2. Pious Old Women.

First, relics. "This is a tiny piece of a bone of a saint." Or, "This is a tiny piece of a cloth that once touched a tiny piece of a bone of a saint." I've often wondered about how to react to relics. It is so foreign to our modern minds to even think about death, much less to keep bones around where you can see them.

Second, perhaps part of the hesitation with relics is that they are so often beloved by that other difficulty, that is, pious old women. You know who I am talking about. The old lady who comes half an hour early to church to pray the rosary loudly (and perhaps to tell you that you should be a nun). The woman who says uncomfortable things quite comfortably. 

And so it took me by surprise today to find myself in line at the Basilica behind a number of pious old women waiting to venerate a relic of St. Peter. Again I was struck by the strangeness of it, how different it was from anything I would encounter on a daily basis, how almost-comical it would be if I didn't believe that it was true: here's a piece of a bone of the man who walked on water.

And again I was struck by that same "other-ness" of the pious old women with their flip phones taking pictures of it. I smiled to myself wondering if they had a whole album on their tiny phones of tiny relics, and maybe they flipped open those phones during Thanksgiving with their families as they told their niece that she was dressed like a hussy and she shouldn't do that because -- "Look at this relic."

But my cynical sense of humor was interrupted by the Monsignor who happened to be having a conversation at the end of the line with just one of those women, one I know rather well. He didn't have the look of panic on his face that most people have when they speak with her -- the look of "How am I going to find a way to get out of this conversation?" He didn't have the look of someone who was secretly laughing at her piety, as she went on about the time that she once sang in a chorus that sang for the Pope's visit. He didn't have the look of someone who was condescending to speak to her -- and he might have, considering that this is DC, the name-dropping, networking city, where important people attend Mass at the Basilica.

No, I looked at his face as he attentively listened and smiled at her, and I looked at the faces of the pious old women in front of the relics, and I saw the same expression. The Monsignor, too, was venerating a relic.

And that's when I really realized how Christianity places such a radical emphasis on the beauty of each human person the entire person, body and soul. Even the tiniest part of that person. Even the oldest person. C.S. Lewis once said, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” 

So today I said a prayer of Thanksgiving for pious old women and for all that they challenge us to be.