Finding Philip

At the recent exhibition of relics at Our Lady of the Rosary Church we had a fragment of the cloak of St Joseph, a piece of the Veil of Our Lady and the True Cross and a reliquary with relics of all twelve apostles.

Naturally the skeptics among us were musing, "Yes, but... the Veil of Our Lady? Come now. Let us be sensible. The relics of all twelve apostles? I'm dubious."

However, the more I think about the relics and their possible authenticity the more this old Protestant boy starts believing. Here is an article, for example, of the recent discovery of the tomb of St Philip in Turkey. Think about the timing. Let's say they really only started seriously collecting relics after Christianity was made legal, after the conversion of Constantine in 315.

In fact, documentary and archeological evidence shows that the early Christians venerated the bones of the martyrs far earlier than that, but let us say, for the sake of argument that they really only started to collect the relics after 315. The apostles all died by the end of the first century. That give us just over 200 years between the death of the apostles and the collection of their relics.

What happened in our time period two hundred years ago? That would be the year 1811. Why, we have lots of corporate memories, artifacts and information of the stuff that was important to us back then. If the early Christians retained the memory of where Peter was buried in Rome, would they not have also retained the memory of where the other apostles were buried? Wouldn't they have built shrines to the ones who walked with the Lord? I think they would have, and the traditions say they did.

Were those bones exhumed and relics taken? Were the relics treasured and authenticated and passed down even to our day? I don't see why not.