All of that stopped when a dark van arrived with the gold-decorated reliquary containing half of the earthly remains of St. Therese of Lisieux. At Tuesday's ceremony, a solemn procession of ushers in dark suits, altar boys in robes, Knights of Columbus in feathery admiral-style hats and priests in vestments emerged from the monastery in Parnell and marched through the heart of the crowd to meet the saint. One thing this shows is that religion is thriving. We're supposed to be living in this world today of virtual reality, telecommuting and e-mail where people don't need to have contact with each other anymore. But what this tour shows is that virtual isn't enough.
People do want to be in the presence of real, physical things.
It's a way of making the invisible seem visible. The Catholic church teaches that saints reside in heaven and may be able to help facilitate prayers to God. Honoring the relics of saints is a practice that dates nearly 2,000 years. But many of the faithful, who waited two to three hours in the cold for a chance to enter a chapel and kneel near the reliquary, said St. Therese is unlike most other saints. In her brief life, before dying of tuberculosis at age 24 in 1897, she performed no miracles and was virtually unknown outside Lisieux, France.