Tabor Hills chapel displays Holy Relics

FOR Nanay Rita Taping, distributing envelopes for Mass intentions at the entrance of a chapel that houses the bone fragments of her beloved saint is an “act of thanksgiving.”

The 53-year-old Taping, a volunteer clerk, said she first went to the Chapel of Holy Relics in Tabor Hills, barangay San Jose, Cebu City to seek healing, as she experienced such symptoms of aging as rising cholesterol level.

After praying fervently to St. Rita of Cascia which had relics inside the church, these symptoms vanished. “Naa gyud diay mga santos nga nag-giya nato (There really are saints who are guiding us),” she said.

Fr. Dennis Duene Ruiz, procurator of the St. Thomas Villanova Professed House in Talamban, Cebu City, said the relics are the people’s direct connection to saints in the Bible as well as the fathers and icons.

Relics are physical remains of a saint such as bones, pieces of clothing or some object associated with saints or other religious figures that have been authenticated by the Catholic Church.

They are divided into three classes. First class relics are body parts of saints with their garments relegated to the second class.

Any object touched by a first or second class relic including the tomb of a saint falls under the third class.

“Dakong tabang ang mga relic sa pagtuo sa mga tawo labi na katong mga relic na kinuha sa pasyon ni Hesu Kristo (The relics are a big help to the people’s faith especially the ones recovered during Jesus Christ’s passion),” Ruiz said,

A splinter from the “True Cross” on which Jesus Christ was nailed and a bit of the table on which he celebrated the Last Supper could be found in the chapel among others.

A part of a veil that the Blessed Virgin Mary wore and fragments of bones of saints like the apostle Peter and John the Evangelist were also found there.

The Church likewise houses a fragment of the crown of thorns Roman soldiers placed on Christ’s head and a piece from the Holy Shroud of Turin, the cloth used to wipe Jesus’ face after the crucifixion.

Placed inside golden or silver reliquaries, these relics from Christ’s passion are displayed in the chapel, together with others from all the Christian church’s popes and doctors, from St. Dimas, St. Nicodemus and a hundred others.

Ruiz acquired many of the relics in the late 1990s while he pursued graduate degrees in Church history and heritage at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy.

He secured the others from the Lipsanoteca, a church agency that dispenses relics from offices of religious orders.

All relics were issued by the Vatican with certificates of authenticity.

The relics are administered by Ruiz with the help of the Order of Discalced Augustinians (OAD) in their  Tabor Hills compound which visitors from all over the Cebu province visit during Holy Week.

“Visitors here have shot up to around 200 to 300,000 during the Holy Week,” said Ruiz.

Ruiz said the visitors told them that “they feel re-energized physically and spiritually just by sitting around the chapel and observing the magnificence of the relics.”

“Relics don’t exist as a mere feast for the eyes. They serve their purpose as constant reminders of the re-education of Christian life and faith,” Ruiz said. /Peter L. Romanillos, UP Intern