So many things to contemplate while on this earth.

Can you imagine how many more such things Heaven will offer?

Let’s stay for a moment on this earth.

When it comes to thinking about the physical, one is made to wonder any number of things. For example, did you ever ponder:

What happened to the robe Jesus wore? This is particularly powerful: Surely someone—His mother, or one of the disciples—kept it (or them: robes plural). Can you imagine how powerful such a relic, or just a thread from that relic, would be? Around that thread, you could build a cathedral. (By the way, who weaved it–perhaps the Blessed Mother?)

It’s curious that we have pottery and other artifacts from ancient Egypt and Greece — B.C. — but not from the Lord Himself. He left, of course, no mummy.

Jesus rose above all that is material.

Are the nails from His Cross really in Rome? Are there slivers of the “True Cross” around the world (so many claimed!)?

At Our Lady of Good Counsel in Rome are pieces of wood, according to Church tradition, from the Manger.

Other churches claim to have relics from the Virgin Mary.

In France is a church with her “veil.”

In Israel, they believe they have remnants of her milk.

Her veil: Constantinople. Or is it Chartres Cathedral, in France?

Her hair: St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

Having been assumed into Heaven, Mary took, it seems, much with her.

Is this the cloak of Saint Joseph?

It goes on.

There are those who, as you may have heard, not only say there are relics from Noah’s Ark, but that the entire Ark is buried in Turkey.

As for that other famous Ark (of the Convenant), a church in Africa claims to have that (as do other places) as well. According to Ethiopian tradition, the Ark of the Covenant is preserved in the ancient holy city of Aksum. For centuries, the great relic was kept in the Church of Mary of Zion, where the emperor Iyasu is recorded as having seen it and spoken to it in 1691.

Again, all this we take under advisement.

How about something from John the Baptist? Or Moses? Can you imagine having that staff!

What would you love to see, to touch, to kiss? The mind can work overtime.

Of course, we actually have all we need, far more than any relic.

We have the Bible.

We have His Prayer.

We also have His Body and Blood.

We have the Eucharist.

It doesn’t get much more rarefied than that.

[Michael Brown will be in the nation’s oldest city, St. Augustine, Florida, May 18]