THE SAINTS IN A YEAR: ST POLYCARP AND THE VENERATION OF RELICS

Fr Billy Swan

The feast day of St Polycarp is celebrated by the Church each year on 23^rd February. He was born about 70 AD and died in his eighties as bishop of Smyrna which is modern day Izmir in Turkey. He is an important figure in the early Church as he was a friend of St John the Apostle and so belongs to a group called the Apostolic Fathers whose writings reveal the early Christian faith after the death of the Twelve chosen by Jesus.

What we know about St Polycarp comes from a letter he wrote called ‘The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians’ and the account of his own martyrdom recalled in a work known as ‘The Martyrdom of Polycarp’. The latter is important because it is the earliest evidence we have of the veneration of relics that remains part of our faith tradition today.

Polycarp was burned at the stake for refusing to deny his Christian faith and to worship the Roman gods. ‘The Martyrdom of Polycarp’ contains two crucial passages that continue to guide our understanding of the proper veneration of relics.

On the death of Polycarp, the body of the saint was not handed over to the Church immediately as a punishment for his defiance of the Emperor and his refusal to worship state gods. But there was another reason the Romans refused to surrender the body of Polycarp. In their eyes, they did not want to create a new god for them to worship. In their appeal, Polycarp’s fellow Christians seized on this error to clarify that while they wanted to honour Polycarp, their faith was in Christ and their worship was due to him alone:

‘Little do they know that it could never be possible for us to abandon the Christ who died for the salvation of every soul – or to worship any other. It is to him, as the Son of God, that we give our adoration, while to the martyrs, as disciples and imitators of the Lord, we give the love they have earned by their matchless devotion to their king and teacher’.

This witness refutes and corrects an accusation often levelled at the practise of the veneration of relics – namely that, at best, it distracts from faith in Christ or, at worst, replaces authentic faith with a superstition that the relics themselves contain some sort of inherent power. The extract above makes abundantly clear that while Polycarp’s fellow Christians honoured his bodily remains, they would never forget the faith in Christ for which Polycarp died.

The second extract from ‘The Martyrdom of Polycarp’ is equally important. When the bodily remains of the martyr saint were eventually released, it states:

‘We took up his bones which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place; where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy, and to celebrate the birth-day of his martyrdom for the commemoration of those that have already fought in the contest, and for the training and preparation of those that shall do so hereafter’.

What this text shows is the link between the veneration of the saints’ relics and their gathering ‘in the Lord’, in other words for worship. This is consistent with the emergence of Churches build in places like Rome that were built over sites where the relics of the saints were placed. The point is clear – the veneration of relics is inextricably linked to prayer and worship of God.

Finally, the text reveals another crucially important reason for honouring St Polycarp – that it helped form and train catechumens and the baptised in steadfast witness to the Christian faith, inspired by the witness of St Polycarp. Venerating relics connects us to the historical existence of the saint and the examples of their courageous witnesses in order to inspire present and future generations to bear the same witness in their time.

So, as we celebrate the feast of St Polycarp and venerate the relics of the saints, may our devotion direct us to faith in and worship of God alone. And may it form and inspire present and future Christians to be faithful to Christ, as people like St Polycarp were, even onto death.