An Item Which Touched in a 3rd Class Relic

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Well, I know deacons can get married before ordination, so I assumed that you are a deacon. Nevermind.
 
I actually cannot find any third class relics of St John Paul II, anyway, I am looking for a long time for a medal with his 3rd class relic and I cannot find anything online that cheaper than 30$. My Mother Teresa’s relic came in a prayer card and I got it for free from a friend in Vatican.
 
Ori_Kasha said:
I actually cannot find any third class relics of St John Paul II, anyway, I am looking for a long time for a medal with his 3rd class relic and I cannot find anything online that cheaper than 30$.
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I don’t know where you’re located, but there’s a US mail order shop online called JP2Corner.com that always has St. Pope JPII relic medals, relic holy cards, and relic rosaries for really low prices.
The owners are originally from Poland 🙂

They also have a lot of other relic medals, some of them are for holy people who are still Blessed, Venerable etc or are not very well known yet. I got some Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko relic medals from there, I love him and it’s hard to find medals and stuff of him for some reason - they didn’t even have any at the church gift shop next to his grave when I was in Poland.
 
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I bet they will be among the first to have Bl. Carlo Acutis relic medals as well, though there might be a delay due to COVID.

I was hoping they’d have a Bl. Fr. Sopocko medal but for some reason they only have his prayer card and it’s only in their eBay store, so I am guessing again that COVID might have made it difficult for them to restock.
 
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I ordered 6 relic medals. They are out of a couple that I wanted. Will have to check back and see if they get them again. I was surprised to see the Bl. Giorgio Frasati one and ordered it!
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I have heard this is not done anymore.
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You can still get first class relics, that’s what I’ve been told by Passionist nuns, but if you ask them to send it by letter that’s not possible of course.
Last time I asked for relic was of Saint Gemma. I got 2nd class relic of her clothes with stain of blood and sweat (little piece), maybe we could say it is combination of first and second class relic in one. It is from her shrine in Italy.
Other relics I have are second and third class, some from shrines and some from store.
 
Diaconia said:
When our newly-built Newman Center needed a relic of Pope St. John Paul II, who the church is named for, the archbishop called the former Pope’s secretary (now a Cardinal), who sent us the shirt he was wearing when he was shot, it has quite a bit of the Pope’s blood on it.
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First-class relics of John Paul II are kind of tricky, in that his body was placed in a coffin surrounded in sealed zinc, and supposedly, natural corruption hasn’t taken place as you would expect with an unembalmed or lightly-embalmed body. (It’s not clear exactly how much embalming, if any, was done.) Without getting too graphic, first-class relics can’t be obtained “in the usual way”. It would have to be either his blood or his hair.
Ori_Kasha said:
Well, I know deacons can get married before ordination, so I assumed that you are a deacon. Nevermind.
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Nope, not to take anything away from the sacred office of deacon, but if I were going to offer myself to the Church, I’d be “in for a penny, in for a pound”, and would wish to go all the way. (Of course, “my” wish would mean absolutely nothing, which is as it should be — I have a hard time imagining that the concept of “I want” exists in heaven, which is ultimately what it’s all about.)

The one thing that would absolutely scare the living daylights out of me, about being ordained a priest, is that a man becomes a priest forever, in time and in eternity, and not just that, but he is responsible for all of the souls to whom he’s ministered, and he is judged accordingly. Celibacy and having to obey your bishop are a drop in the bucket compared to that. Scary stuff indeed. Much, much harder to save your soul.
 
There is a school of thought that it has to touch the actual blood, not the outside of a container. The exception being a tomb, you can touch the outside of the tomb and make a 3rd class relic.

However, it’s really the thought that counts.

I’ve touched my rosary to relics of St Padre Pio probably 10 times now trying to make a 3rd class relic, but always to the outside of a container. Also to the outside of his replica tomb in PA that has a first class relic inside. Not sure if any of it counts, but still I remain hopeful. Maybe one day I might get to touch it to his actual tomb and that will settle the matter.
 
Thank you so much for posting this link, @Tis_Bearself! I was very excited to see a St. Nicholas medal and relic so that I could start a small collection of religious items for my daughter.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
There is a school of thought that it has to touch the actual blood, not the outside of a container. The exception being a tomb, you can touch the outside of the tomb and make a 3rd class relic.

However, it’s really the thought that counts.
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But if it were a piece of absorbent cloth, wouldn’t it “become” a first-class relic, by virtue of the fact that it contained a minuscule amount of his blood? (Yes, I am aware that other things, some of them not absorbent, could be touched to the blood and not retain any of it, thus remaining third-class.)

And this is almost getting into Talmudic-style splitting of hairs (no pun intended), but couldn’t a vial containing the blood of a saint be considered a “tomb” of sorts, i.e., a solid container holding the remains of the saint?

Again, this whole discourse would sound bizarre and disgusting, in equal measures, to anyone outside the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. So be it, we are the one true Church (or an intact, prorupted portion of it, as the case may be), they’re not, let them embrace our truth, because we’re surely not going to embrace their error.
 
If the cloth has the saint’s blood on it, then the blood is a first class relic, attached to the cloth which by itself is second-class if the saint used it (like clothing, a bandage) and third class if it was just some piece of cloth not belonging to the saint that was dipped in blood posthumously.

I have wondered about the tomb thing myself, particularly in cases where pieces of the saint are all over the place, an arm here, a leg there, a torso in some other country. It seems like these saints have multiple tombs. Also, like I said in PA they built a large human-size table-shaped “tomb” of Padre Pio and put a first class relic in it and call it a “replica tomb” and you can touch it, put a prayer on it or in a receptacle attached, etc. So does that count as a “tomb”? Obviously the majority of his body is in San Giovanni Rotondo, but it’s clear this replica tomb contains some part of him no matter how small, and it’s meant to function as a “tomb”. I touched my rosary to it anyway and hoped for the best.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
I have wondered about the tomb thing myself, particularly in cases where pieces of the saint are all over the place, an arm here, a leg there, a torso in some other country. It seems like these saints have multiple tombs. Also, like I said in PA they built a large human-size table-shaped “tomb” of Padre Pio and put a first class relic in it and call it a “replica tomb” and you can touch it, put a prayer on it or in a receptacle attached, etc. So does that count as a “tomb”? Obviously the majority of his body is in San Giovanni Rotondo, but it’s clear this replica tomb contains some part of him no matter how small, and it’s meant to function as a “tomb”. I touched my rosary to it anyway and hoped for the best.
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By the same reasoning, any reliquary would count as a “tomb”, and may do precisely that.

Again, this borders on Talmudic reasoning, not to say that is a bad thing. You can’t ever make your mind and reasoning too sharp. I know that you, as an attorney, can surely appreciate that.
 
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I, wearing my Knights of Columbus hat*, have had a couple of occasions to escort 1st Class relics for veneration by the faithful, and to produce 3rd Class relics for them by touching prayer cards or other items to the outside of the reliquary.
*
The former feathered hat – Not the beret that some wear today.
 
Yes, the K of C did a nice job with the St. John Vianney relic tour a year or two ago. I went to two different stops and touched a St. John Vianney medal to the outside of the reliquary case containing his heart.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Yes, the K of C did a nice job with the St. John Vianney relic tour a year or two ago. I went to two different stops and touched a St. John Vianney medal to the outside of the reliquary case containing his heart.
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For some serious family reasons, I did not get to go. I hope they bring the relic back around one of these days.

Or I could always just go to Ars. I may be spending anywhere from two weeks to a month in Paris in 2022. I’m already trying to find cheap AirBnB places.
 
I have a first-class relic of St.Stanislaus Kostka. It was sent to me by my uncle during the eighties a few months before he died. He was a St. John of God brother . and his name in religion was Brother Stanislaus.
 
How were you able to obtain the 2nd class relic of Bl. Pro? I tried to find a way but came up empty.
 
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