The Moment the Coffin Opens
It is October 20, 1599. Cardinal Paolo Sfondrati has ordered renovation of the ancient basilica in Trastevere, Rome — a church dedicated to a young Roman virgin martyred around the year 177. Nearly fifteen centuries have passed. During excavation beneath the high altar, workers strike marble. Two sarcophagi are uncovered. The Cardinal orders them opened in the presence of sworn witnesses.
The cypress casket within is intact. He lifts the lid.
The body of Saint Cecilia lies as she died — on her right side, knees slightly drawn, arms extended, a veil over her face so ancient and so delicate that no one dares lift it. The wounds of her martyrdom are still visible at her neck. She appears to be sleeping. She has been in the ground for more than fourteen hundred years.
Pope Clement VIII orders the body displayed publicly for a month. Pilgrims fill the church day and night. The sculptor Stefano Maderno, then at work on the basilica, witnesses the discovery himself and is commissioned to render in marble the exact posture in which the saint was found. Beneath the finished statue he inscribes his personal oath, carved into stone for all generations to read: Behold the body of the most holy virgin Cecilia, whom I myself saw lying incorrupt in her tomb. I have in this marble expressed for thee the same saint in the very same posture of body.
That statue still stands in the Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere today. It is a man's sworn word that something refused to obey the laws of a fallen world, and that he saw it with his own eyes and could not remain silent.
This is where the mystery begins: not in a classroom, not in an argument, but in encounter — a coffin opened, a body found, a witness on his knees.
I. What Is Incorruptibility?
The Word the Church Uses
The English word incorruptibility comes from the Latin incorruptus — not broken down, not decayed. But the theological heart of the word lives in the Greek of Saint Paul. His word is aphtharsia — αΌΟΞΈΞ±ΟΟΞ―Ξ± — from a- (not) and phthora (decay, corruption, perishing). It appears seven times in the New Testament, always in the mouth of the Apostle, always to describe the condition of the risen body at the last day. In 1 Corinthians 15:42 he writes that what is sown perishable is raised imperishable — en aphtharsΓa. In 2 Timothy 1:10 he proclaims that Our Lord Jesus Christ abolished death and brought life and incorruptibility to light through the Gospel. In Romans 2:7 he speaks of those who by patient endurance in doing good seek for glory and honour and incorruptibility.
When the Catholic Church applies this word to the preserved bodies of her saints, she does so with full theological intention and complete seriousness. These bodies are understood as a foretaste — partial, provisional, given by God's sovereign freedom to particular souls in particular ages — of what aphtharsia in its fullness will mean for all the redeemed on the last day. They are not relics of the past. They are pledges of the future. They are God writing, in human flesh, the promises of 1 Corinthians 15.
The Standard the Church Sets
The Church does not accept every claim of incorruptibility. She examines, she scrutinises, she applies a demanding standard. The most authoritative treatment of this standard was given by Prospero Lambertini — theologian, canonist, Promoter of the Faith, and later Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758) — in his systematic treatise Doctrina de Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione. In two chapters titled De Cadaverum Incorruptione, he established criteria the Church applies to this day.
What Benedict XIV requires is this: the body must retain lifelike flexibility — not the rigid dryness of a mummified corpse; natural colour and freshness — not the brown leather of desiccation; and the complete absence of putrefactive odour — not merely neutralised, but absent. And it must have been preserved without any deliberate human intervention — no embalming, no chemicals, no artificial means. All three conditions must be present together and sustained for many years after death.
This standard excludes much that popular devotion has sometimes put forward — bodies preserved naturally by dry crypts or cold climates, bodies embalmed and the records later lost, bodies found intact but which swiftly decay once exposed to air. What remains after the Church's careful sifting is smaller, and therefore more genuinely remarkable.
Three Things Every Catholic Should Know
Incorruptibility is not proof of sainthood. The Church has never taught that it is. It is a sign — one the Church receives with reverence and presents to the faithful — but sanctity is demonstrated through heroic virtue, charity, and a life given entirely to God. The sign does not create the holiness. It witnesses to it.
Incorruptibility is not required for canonisation. The bodies of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint John Henry Newman, Saint Thomas More, and countless martyrs were not preserved. God grants this sign to whom He wills, for purposes belonging entirely to His own providence.
Incorruptibility is a gratia gratis data — a grace given freely for the Church, not for the saint. Saint Thomas Aquinas, following Saint Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 12–14, distinguishes between graces that sanctify the one who receives them and graces given freely as signs for the building up of the whole Church. The incorrupt body of a saint is not given for the saint, who has no need of it, being already face to face with God. It is given for us — as a physical, visible, undeniable sign addressed to a particular age — pointing beyond itself to the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.
II. Why the Body Matters: The Catholic Doctrine
Created Good, Destined for Glory
The first truth of Catholic teaching about the human body is spoken on the first page of Sacred Scripture. God looked upon everything He had made — including the body of clay into which He had breathed His own Spirit — and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches this with precision: The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God" (CCC §364). The body is not incidental to the person. It is not a prison from which the soul longs to escape, as the pagans imagined. It is the form in which God made us, the instrument through which we pray and love and serve, and the very mode in which the eternal Son of God took up our human existence.
This is the foundation of the whole tradition. The body matters because God made it and declared it good. God became body in the Incarnation. The body will rise in the resurrection. And in the meantime, when God chooses, He preserves the bodies of His saints as signs that He has not forgotten what He made.
Corruption Entered Through Sin
Death and bodily corruption were not part of God's original design for humanity. The Church teaches, on the ground of Genesis 3:19 — you are dust, and to dust you shall return — that bodily decay is the consequence of the Fall, the penalty by which the severing of the human will from God left the body exposed to the laws of fallen and corrupted matter.
Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Bishop and martyr, writing in the second century in his great work Against Heresies, places this at the centre of his understanding of what Christ came to accomplish. God is incorruptible and immortal. By the Incarnation, by taking human flesh upon Himself, the eternal Son conveys His own incorruptibility to our nature: "For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality" (Against Heresies, III.19). The Incarnation is itself the beginning of the reversal of decay. Christ did not merely bring a teaching about salvation; He became, in His own Person, the medicine of immortality for human flesh.
Every incorrupt body of every saint in the Church's long history is a small echo of this great reversal — a fragment of the remedy already at work in a world that still waits for its final healing.
The Eucharist: Seed of Resurrection
Saint Irenaeus draws one of the most luminous connections in all patristic theology: between the reception of the Holy Eucharist and the body's destiny of incorruption. In Against Heresies (IV.18) he writes: "Our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of resurrection to eternity." The logic is this: the bread and wine of earth, receiving the invocation of God, become the Body and Blood of the risen Christ. And our mortal bodies, nourished by that risen Body, receive within themselves the seed of the resurrection — the very life of the One who conquered death.
The incorrupt body of a saint is the body of a person who received the Eucharist — perhaps daily for decades — in whose flesh the seeds of resurrection were planted through that most intimate union with the risen Lord. Is it a wonder that, in chosen cases, those seeds begin to show themselves before the final harvest?
Saint Paul: The Body Destined for Incorruption
The fifteenth chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians is the scriptural summit of this entire mystery. Paul confronts those who denied the resurrection of the body. His response is both a reasoned argument and an act of faith.
He grounds everything in historical fact witnessed by named persons: Christ is risen. Seen by Peter, by the Twelve, by more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still alive. Seen by James. Seen by Paul himself. This is the foundation on which everything rests. If Christ is raised, the dead will also be raised — because His resurrection is the first fruits, the pledged beginning of the harvest that must follow: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22).
Then comes the passage that is the theological heart of the incorrupt saints:
What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. (1 Cor 15:42–43)
The Greek word for imperishable is aphtharsia — incorruptibility. The same body buried in earth will be raised incorruptible. Not a different body. Not a spiritual shadow or a fresh creation. This body — transformed, glorified, freed from every trace of death and dissolution, but genuinely this body, the body that prayed and suffered and loved on earth.
Paul reaches his great climax with a shout across the ages:
For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality... Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? (1 Cor 15:53–55)
Every time a pilgrim kneels before the glass reliquary of an incorrupt saint — in Nevers, in Paris, in Ars, in Lucca, in Goa, in Annaya, in KrakΓ³w — they are standing at a foretaste of this proclamation made flesh. They are touching the edge of the promise. This perishable has begun to put on the imperishable. Here. In this body. Before their eyes.
The Body as Temple of the Holy Spirit
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).
The baptised Christian's body is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit from the moment of Baptism. It is consecrated — not metaphorically but really — by the indwelling of the third Person of the Holy Trinity. And Saint Paul adds the corollary that binds this present consecration to the future resurrection: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:11).
The Spirit who raised Jesus is already dwelling in the baptised body. He is already at work. And when His work is complete — when the soul has been wholly conformed to Christ through a life of holiness, through suffering accepted, through charity poured out — sometimes, in certain chosen bodies, the Spirit lets that work show itself even before the resurrection morning. The incorrupt body of a saint is, in this reading, the body in which the Spirit has been so deeply at home that even physical corruption is held at bay — a visible sign that this was no ordinary dwelling, but a temple long and faithfully inhabited.
III. The Voice of Sacred Scripture
The mystery of incorruptibility is not found at the margins of Scripture. It runs through both Testaments as a continuous thread, from the first pages of Genesis to the last vision of the Apocalypse.
From the Old Testament, the promises accumulate:
You will not abandon my soul to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay (Psalm 16:10). Saint Peter at Pentecost (Acts 2:27) and Saint Paul at Antioch (Acts 13:35) both apply this verse to the resurrection of Christ, whose flesh did not see corruption. The Greek word is diaphthoran — decay, decomposition. It is the founding proclamation of Easter.
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God (Job 19:25–26). Saint Thomas Aquinas cites this among the primary Old Testament testimonies to bodily resurrection. From my flesh — not despite its ruin, but through it — Job awaits the face of God.
Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! (Isaiah 26:19). And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life (Daniel 12:2). The Creator of the world, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again — the mother of the seven martyred brothers, speaking to her last surviving son of the resurrection of his body (2 Maccabees 7:23). Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Psalm 116:15).
From the New Testament, the promises reach their fulfilment:
The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth (John 5:28). I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20). He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:11). He will transfigure the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory (Philippians 3:21). This perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53).
And finally, at the end of all things, from the vision given to Saint John on Patmos: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:4).
Every incorrupt body of every saint in every reliquary in the world is a fragment of Revelation 21:4 pressed through into the present age. A fragment of the world from which death has departed, visible here and now, for those with eyes to see.
IV. The Signs That Accompany Holiness
In many of the most carefully attested cases, bodily incorruption is accompanied by one or more further signs that the Church has always received as belonging to the vocabulary of holiness. These signs do not stand alone; they form a coherent language — God speaking through the bodies of His saints in ways that reinforce and illuminate one another.
The Odour of Sanctity
We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved (2 Corinthians 2:15). Saint Paul uses the language of fragrance to describe the holy life: an offering acceptable to God, rising as incense before His throne. When Saint Paul of Philippi wrote of the Philippians' gift to him, he called it a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God (Philippians 4:18). The holy life, wholly offered, is a sweet savour to the Lord.
At death, when the offering is complete, this fragrance sometimes becomes physically perceptible. When Saint Teresa of Γvila died on October 4, 1582, those present in the room reported that the air filled immediately with an overwhelming sweetness like roses. Her biographer Father Ribera records that the fragrance persisted for eight months at her grave, and that a sister of the convent who had lost her sense of smell found it miraculously restored when she kissed the feet of the saint's body — the first thing she perceived being the perfume of Teresa. Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina radiated a fragrance of roses, violets, and incense both during his lifetime and after his death, perceived by people in countries he never visited, continuing to the present day through the testimony of those who seek his intercession.
The odour of sanctity is received by the Church as a favourable sign, one element in the whole pattern of holiness — but it carries no canonical weight in itself. It belongs to the same vocabulary as incorruption: the body that gave itself entirely to God bearing in death the fragrance of what it was in life.
The Incorruption of a Particular Member
In several celebrated cases, not the entire body but a specific organ — precisely the one through which the saint exercised their particular gift — is found preserved when the rest of the body has returned to dust. No case is more famous than that of Saint Anthony of Padua.
Anthony died on June 13, 1231, aged thirty-five. When his remains were exhumed in 1263 — thirty-two years after his death — the body had naturally decomposed, as bodies decompose. But his tongue and jaw were found perfectly intact: moist, lifelike, and fresh. Saint Bonaventure, Minister General of the Franciscans and one of the supreme intellects of the medieval Church, was present at the exhumation. He took the preserved tongue in his own hands and addressed it before the assembled community. His words, recorded in the Franciscan sources, have resounded through the centuries: O blessed tongue, that always praised the Lord and made others praise Him — now it is plain what great merit thou hast before God. The tongue of Anthony — the instrument of thirty-five years of the most powerful preaching the medieval West had known — remains in its Gothic reliquary in the Basilica del Santo in Padua to this day, more than seven hundred and fifty years after it was first found incorrupt, venerated by millions of pilgrims.
Exudation
In the most extraordinary and most extensively documented cases in the entire tradition, an incorrupt body has continued to exude from its pores a mysterious liquid — described as combining qualities of blood and perspiration — not for days but for years or decades after death, in quantities that no residual bodily fluid could account for.
The supreme instance is Saint Charbel Makhlouf, the Maronite hermit of Lebanon. He died on Christmas Eve, 1898, and was buried according to Maronite custom in an earth grave without a coffin. He had not been embalmed. For forty-five nights after his burial, a bright light shone over his grave, seen by the villagers of Annaya and the monks of the monastery on both sides of the mountain. When the community exhumed the body on April 22, 1899, they found the grave flooded by spring rains — and the body floating in the water, perfectly intact, supple and flexible, warm to the touch, exuding from every pore a reddish liquid described as a mixture of blood and sweat. From that day, the exudation continued so copiously that his habit had to be changed twice each week. Exhumations in 1927, 1950, and 1952 found the body still intact, still exuding — twenty-nine, fifty-two, and fifty-four years after his death. The flow ceased around 1965, the year of his beatification by Pope Paul VI at the close of the Second Vatican Council. When the body was opened again in 1976, it had at last naturally decomposed — only the bones remaining, stained a deep red by sixty-seven years of the mysterious liquid.
Sixty-seven years of continuous exudation. Sworn testimony from multiple generations. Medical examination at four separate exhumations. Pope Paul VI beatified him before the Council Fathers of the whole world. Pope John Paul II canonised him in 1977.
V. How the Church Verifies Her Saints
The Church does not accept what she has not examined. This is not scepticism — it is the integrity of a mother who loves her children too much to mislead them.
When a body comes to the Church's attention as possibly incorrupt, the local bishop authorises a formal exhumation. Present at every such exhumation are: civil authorities ensuring legal observance; the bishop or his formally appointed delegate; a canonical notary who records every detail in a sworn protocol; and qualified doctors who examine the body and produce a written medical report under oath. The canonical protocol records everything: the condition of the coffin, the state of the grave, the clothing, the odour, the condition of the skin and tissue, the flexibility or rigidity of the limbs, the presence or absence of any sign of embalming, and any unusual features observed.
The standard the doctors apply is the standard given by Benedict XIV: flexibility, colour, absence of putrefaction, and no evidence of artificial preservation. Where burial conditions — a damp vault, a flooded grave, an unsealed coffin in warm soil — should have produced rapid and complete decomposition, and have not, the Church notes that the preservation requires explanation. Where adequate natural explanations are found, the Church acknowledges them without hesitation. The Church is not embarrassed by the truth. She requires it.
What incorruptibility contributes to the cause of a saint, under the norms established by Pope John Paul II in 1983 (Divinus Perfectionis Magister), is not a formal canonical miracle. It carries no official weight in the required miracle count for beatification or canonisation. What it does carry is the immemorial witness of the tradition: a sign received by the Church, examined by the Church, and presented by the Church to the faithful as a physical, visible, bodily testimony to the resurrection of the dead and the faithfulness of God.
A note on the wax masks some pilgrims observe: On certain incorrupt bodies displayed for veneration — including Saint Bernadette Soubirous and Saint John Vianney — a thin wax covering is applied over the face and hands. This has never been hidden or misrepresented; it is fully documented in the official canonical records and openly explained by the custodians of every such shrine. When a preserved body is exposed to light and air after years in a sealed tomb, the features can darken. The wax covering, cast directly from the preserved face, prevents further deterioration and presents the saint naturally to the pilgrim. The body beneath is intact. The covering is an act of care, not of concealment.
VI. Miracles Beyond Time: The Incorruptibles of the Catholic Church
These are the saints and blesseds whose bodies the Church has presented to the faithful as incorrupt or partially incorrupt, venerated in the churches and shrines noted. Each of the linked articles on this blog tells their full story.
Saint Bernadette Soubirous Visionary of Lourdes. Daughter of Charity of Nevers. Died April 16, 1879, aged 35. Exhumed under formal canonical commission in 1909, 1919, and 1925. At each examination the body was found intact, flexible, and without odour. The medical reports confirm she was never embalmed. Since 1925, a wax mask covers the preserved face and hands. Body: Convent of Saint-Gildard, Nevers, France.
Saint Catherine LabourΓ© Daughter of Charity. Recipient of Our Lady's apparitions at the Rue du Bac in 1830, through which the Miraculous Medal was given to the world. She kept the secret entirely for forty-six years. Died December 31, 1876. Exhumed in 1933 — fifty-seven years after her death — and found in perfect preservation: joints supple, eyes still retaining their natural blue colour. Body: Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, 140 Rue du Bac, Paris.
Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina Capuchin friar. Stigmatist for fifty years. Confessor, spiritual director, and wonder-worker whose confessional drew penitents from every nation. Died September 23, 1968. Canonised 2002 by Pope John Paul II. Body: Shrine of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy.
Saint Vincent de Paul Founder of the Vincentians and the Daughters of Charity. Father of the poor of France. Died September 27, 1660. Body: Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, Rue du Bac, Paris.
Saint Teresa of Γvila Doctor of the Church. Reformer of Carmel. Mystic, theologian, and mother of contemplative religious life in the modern age. Died October 4, 1582. The body was found perfectly preserved and fragrant at exhumation nine months later. The fragrance was reported by witnesses for eight months. Body: Convent of the Annunciation, Alba de Tormes, Spain. Heart preserved separately: Γvila.
Saint John Vianney The CurΓ© of Ars. Patron of parish priests. A man who heard confessions for sixteen to eighteen hours a day for decades and whose confessional drew over one hundred thousand pilgrims a year during his lifetime. Died August 4, 1859. Body: Basilica of Ars, Ars-sur-Formans, France.
Saint Charbel Makhlouf Maronite monk and hermit of Lebanon. Died Christmas Eve, 1898. His body exuded a blood-like liquid continuously for sixty-seven years through four formal exhumations spanning 1899 to 1952. Beatified by Pope Paul VI at the close of the Second Vatican Council, 1965. Canonised 1977. Relics: Monastery of Saint Maron, Annaya, Lebanon.
Saint Clare of Assisi Foundress of the Poor Clares. First woman to write a Rule of life for a religious community. Daughter of Saint Francis in spirit and in poverty. Died August 11, 1253. Body: Basilica of Santa Chiara, Assisi, Italy.
Saint Francis Xavier Jesuit missionary. Apostle of the Indies and Japan. In ten years, he baptised more souls than any other missionary in the history of the Church. Died December 3, 1552, on the island of Shangchuan off the coast of China. Buried in lime. Body found perfectly preserved. Transported four thousand kilometres by sea to Goa, arriving intact in 1554. Body: Basilica of Bom Jesus, Goa, India. Right arm: Church of the GesΓΉ, Rome.
Saint John Bosco Founder of the Salesians. Apostle of the young. Died January 31, 1888. Body: Basilica of Our Lady Help of Christians, Turin, Italy.
Saint Catherine of Siena Dominican tertiary. Doctor of the Church. Co-Patron of Europe. She who called the Pope home from Avignon to Rome. Died Rome, April 29, 1380. Head and thumb: Basilica of San Domenico, Siena. Body: Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.
Saint Veronica Giuliani Capuchin Poor Clare. Stigmatist. Author of a twenty-two-thousand-page spiritual diary. She declared throughout her life that her heart bore the instruments of the Passion. A canonical examination after her death, conducted by the bishop and medical witnesses who had not read her writings, found the tissues of her heart shaped precisely as she had described. Died July 9, 1727. Canonised 1839. Body: Monastery of the Poor Clares, CittΓ di Castello, Italy.
Saint Angela Merici Foundress of the Ursulines. Pioneer of the education of women in the faith. Died January 27, 1540. Body: Church of Sant'Afra, Brescia, Italy.
Saint Gemma Galgani Mystic and stigmatist. Died on Holy Saturday, April 11, 1903, aged twenty-five — the day before Easter. Body: Church of Saint Gemma Galgani, Lucca, Italy.
Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque Visitation nun. Apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose revelations to her gave the Church the devotion that has consoled countless souls in every generation since. Died October 17, 1690. Incorrupt heart: Chapel of the Apparitions, Paray-le-Monial, France.
Saint Bernardine of Siena Franciscan friar and preacher. Propagator of the Holy Name of Jesus throughout Italy. Died May 20, 1444. Body: Basilica of San Bernardino, L'Aquila, Italy.
Saint Zita of Lucca Domestic servant. Patron of household workers. She attended daily Mass at the Basilica of San Frediano throughout her entire life. Died April 27, 1278. Her body has been continuously displayed in the same basilica where she heard Mass every morning of her life — for more than seven hundred and forty years. Body: Basilica of San Frediano, Lucca, Italy.
Saint Silvan of Ahun Hermit-martyr of Gaul. Sixth century. Body: Church of Saint Sylvain, Ahun, France.
Saint Vincent Pallotti Founder of the Pallottines. Apostle of Rome. Died January 22, 1850. Body: Church of San Salvatore in Onda, Rome.
Saint Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart Carmelite nun of Florence. Mystic. Died March 7, 1770, aged twenty-two. Body: Monastery of Santa Teresa, Florence, Italy.
Saint Faustina Kowalska Apostle of Divine Mercy. Secretary of the Lord's mercy for our age. Died October 5, 1938. Canonised 2000 by Pope John Paul II, who also established Divine Mercy Sunday for the universal Church. Body: Divine Mercy Sanctuary, KrakΓ³w-Εagiewniki, Poland.
Saint Alphonsus Liguori Founder of the Redemptorists. Doctor of the Church. Bishop. Moral theologian whose teaching on the mercy of God in the confessional transformed the pastoral life of the modern Church. Died August 1, 1787. Body: Basilica of Sant'Alfonso, Pagani, near Naples, Italy.
VII. What These Bodies Say to Us
The body of an incorrupt saint is not a monument to the past. It is a member of the Church — the part of the Church that has arrived at her destination — present among the part that is still on the road.
These saints prayed in these bodies on earth. They wept in these bodies, hungered in them, suffered in them, received the sacraments in them, bore witness in them. They are praying for us now. And their bodies remain here — sealed in glass, lit by candles, surrounded by kneeling pilgrims in every generation — as a visible, physical, bodily point of meeting between the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. A crack in the wall between time and eternity, through which the light of resurrection presses through.
Saint Paul writes in Romans 8:23 that we groan within ourselves, waiting for... the redemption of our bodies. All creation groans. The body is not yet what it will be. But in the incorrupt body of a saint, something of what it will be is already present — a seed of the new creation sprouting through the old, a fragment of the resurrection morning that is coming for all of us pressing itself, here and now, into sight.
Every visit to the shrine of an incorrupt saint is a visit to the future. The pilgrim who kneels before Saint Catherine LabourΓ© in Paris, or before Saint Bernadette in Nevers, or before Saint Zita in Lucca, is not looking backward. They are looking forward. They are seeing, in advance and in miniature, what Saint Paul proclaimed with a shout that has echoed through every century of the Church's life:
For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
They are standing at the edge of the resurrection, and touching its hem.
Go, pilgrim. And believe.
A Prayer Before an Incorrupt Saint
Lord Jesus Christ, You are the resurrection and the life. You said it and You proved it — not in a parable but in a body, risen from a sealed tomb, bearing the wounds still visible, eating fish beside the lake with those who had known You since Galilee.
We stand before the body of Your servant N., and we are grateful. Grateful for the life You gave them. Grateful for the grace You worked in them and through them. Grateful for the prayer they offer for us now from the place where they behold Your face.
Through this holy sign, deepen in us the faith we confess at every Mass: I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. When our own bodies fail and grow weary, when we feel the weight of the dust from which we came, let us remember what we have seen here — that the corruptible shall put on incorruption, and the mortal shall put on immortality, and that death shall be swallowed up in victory.
We ask this through You, Lord Jesus Christ, the firstborn from the dead, who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
✦ Related pages on this blog: The Relics · Stigmata and Stigmatists · Signs & Wonders: Miracles of the Saints · The Process of Beatification and Canonisation ✦
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