Tag Archives: altar

The Seven Seals

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The Lamb of God and the book/scroll sealed with the seven seals, a popular motif embroidered on a variety of vestments and altar linens. Note that most depict the seven seals still unbroken although occasionally the seals are already open.

I watched as the Lamb broke the first of the seven seals and …. as I watched, there was a pale horse. Its riders name was Death and Hades followed with him. (Apocalypse 6:1-8)

The book/scroll with the seven seals is among the most well-known images from the Apocalypse. Even if people don’t know the biblical source of the image, they at least know about the last, the Seventh Seal, from the famous movie by Ingmar Bergman. The seals and the riders or other visions that are revealed as each seal is broken have appeared many times in books and movies, whether in Agatha Christie mysteries or horror-fantasies or even comedies.

The seals reveal aspects of the liturgy–such as the relics of the martyrs contained in the altars on which the Eucharist is celebrated–as well as aspects of life that are judged by liturgical participation throughout history. Famine, plague, pestilence, and misery are constants throughout human experience. Many expect these to become especially intense just before the world ends; because of this, when these experiences have become intense in the past, many people expected that the world was about to come to an end.

Everyone loves to calculate and predict when exactly the End will come. Even St. Augustine has to tell his congregation, “Give your fingers a rest!” when they spend too much time and energy doing complicated math problems, trying to figure out when exactly the apocalypse will come. (Full disclosure: I still depend on my fingers to do even simple math problems!)

But it has not yet come to an end.

But the world does come to an end each time we celebrate the Eucharist and take our places in the eternal Kingdom of God. The apocalypse happens every time we proclaim, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The apocalypse happens every time we lift up our hearts.

The apocalypse happens every time we ask the Father to send down the Holy Spirit on us and on these Holy Gifts of bread and wine.

The apocalypse happens every time we say, “Our Father… thy kingdom come.”

The apocalypse happens every time because the Holy Spirit lifts us up from earth to heaven to see Christ revealed in all his glory.

When will the seals be broken? They are always being broken, throughout time (during what we call “secular” history) and eternally (in the celebration of the Eucharist).

Witnesses of the Resurrection

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Relics of the martyrs (lit. “witnesses”) whose lives and deaths testify to the power of Christ’s Resurrection, even in the midst of affliction and death. “You let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.” (Psalm 66:12)

In ancient Greece, a martyr was a witness who testified in court. When Christians were arrested and asked to testify in court about their religious beliefs, they were therefore called “martyrs.” But that testimony would usually result in their execution for refusing to practice one of the legitimate religions of the Greco-Roman world; the Church has continued to call those who were executed for their testimony martyrs; their faith, even as they were tortured and killed, was a testimony to the power of Christ’s Resurrection.

After the martyrs were executed, other members of the Church would come collect the corpses or fragments of their tortured bodies for burial. They would gather at the tombs and burial places of the martyrs to celebrate the Eucharist. The bodies were treated with great care and devotion because they had been washed with the waters of baptism, anointed with holy oil, had tasted Holy Communion, and were simply one aspect of the deceased’s existence: a person is made of a body and soul together. Often, portions of the bodies–called “relics,” from the Latin for “remains”–would be placed in new altars, as described in the New Testament, “When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of all who had been martyred for the word of God and for being faithful in their testimony.” (Rev. 6:9)

One of the earliest sources that describes the power of relics is found in 2 Kings 13:20–21:

20 Elisha died and was buried. Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. 21 Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.

Another often cited passage is Acts 19:11–12, which says that Paul’s handkerchiefs were imbued with healing power by God.

Relics are typically divided into three categories:

First-Class Relics: items directly associated with the events of Christ’s life (manger, cross, etc.) or the physical remains of a saint (a bone, a hair, skull, a limb, etc.). Traditionally, a martyr’s relics are often more prized than the relics of other saints. Parts of the saint that were significant to that saint’s life are more prized relics.

Second-Class Relics: items that the saint owned or frequently used, for example, a crucifix, rosary, book, etc. Again, an item more important in the saint’s life is thus a more important relic. Sometimes a second-class relic is a part of an item that the saint wore (a shirt, a glove, etc.).

Third-Class Relics: any object that has been in contact with a first- or second-class relic. Pilgrims would often bring home these Third-class relics as a remembrance of a pilgrimage to a shrine.

For a post about the blood relic of St. Januarius (San Gennaro), first published in 2015, click here.