Sacred Bones. Michael Spring

      My days became as predictable and familiar as morning prayers. Every spring, as soon as the snows began to melt from the alpine passes, I followed the ancient Roman roads north with my cargo of old bones, visiting churches and fairs, filling orders from the previous summer and drumming up business for the year to come. Everyone made out well. The citizens of Rome got to keep their priceless saints and martyrs, who defended them against our enemies. The bones I sold brought the hope of redemption to an ignorant and superstitious people, and reinforced the spiritual centrality of Rome. The relics I sold were worthless as dust, but the Franks believed in their powers and were inspired by them, and who is to say they were wrong or misled?

      Thanks to me, the Franks were able to glimpse a world beyond their own. I never owned a sword, but I did the work of a thousand swords, capturing men’s hearts and souls, and winning them to God. To the faithful, each relic was a little spark of divine power made manifest on earth—touchable, portable, deeply holy. Did it really matter whose bone it was, if it inspired faith? A God who can feed five thousand with a few small barley loaves can sanctify the middle finger of an impecunious Jew or the broken jaw of an ancient galley slave. Everything is possible with Him. What turns people from Him is wrong. What turns them to Him is right. I tremble at the power of a God who can turn senseless bones and dust into instruments of salvation.