The Front Porch

I didn’t know that there was a Reliquary in my neighborhood!

There is a room, above the Saint Joseph Chapel, in the International HQ of the School Sisters of Saint Francis on Layton Boulevard, commonly called The Bone Room – a fact I found out when I toured their Chapel, last Sunday for their 135th Anniversary as an Order.

Maybe the word chapel isn’t the right way to describe it. To me, that conjures up something diminutive, toned-down, simple, basic. The Sister’s place of worship and contemplation? Is more like a mini-cathedral.

It’s Romanesque in style. Made from the finest materials their co-foundress, Mother Alfons, could get her hands on – and judging by the first-class Italian marble columns, mosaics, excruciatingly detailed, hand-carved Stations of the Cross, and stained glass windows – she must have had one hell (excuse me!) of a sales pitch.

I admit that I’m a sucker for all that Catholic goo-ga – Patron Saints, holy cards, statues, a thing that when you press it on a piece of french toast make Jesus’s face appear – the kitschier, the better. On the tour of the Chapel, led by an understudy guide because the original sister had fallen ill, my small, keenly interested group, learned all about the ins and outs, the whys the what fors – like how the mosaics were assembled in Europe and then shipped in one piece to the United States during World War I and how the Sisters prayed to Saint Joseph so that the ship carrying them wouldn’t be sunk. And, wouldn’t you know that good old Joseph came through, and not just on one occasion.

There were other stories of bill collectors coming to the convent for $1500 and having to wait patiently in the front parlor while the sisters prayed (Saint Joseph, again) in the chapel for a miracle because they didn’t have the cash to pay them . . . and who should arrive at their back door? A man with an envelope containing . . . you guessed it . . . $1500.

I wonder if Saint Joseph handles credit card balances?

Anyway . . . the culmination of the tour? The Bone Room. Yeah. Bone. Room. At first, Sister Tour Guide (sorry, I forgot her name) said that there were too many stairs to climb, and since we had a lot of older people in the group (she didn’t mean me, did she?) maybe we shouldn’t bother to go up and see it.

Hold up. You can’t just casually mention that there’s a room full of Saint’s relics – bones, teeth, hair, blood – and not take me up there. But, then again, who am I to argue with a nun?* Well, the 16 year old me wouldn’t have had the guts, but the over 50 year old me did. So I asked, very politely, feigning devotion, “Sister? Is there any way that we could see the Reliquary?” (I thought she’d be impressed by my using the correct terminology, and I was right.)

She led us up the back stairway. Up three flights, and opened a massive oak door. I kind of expected a catacomb-y experience – floor to ceiling stacks of femurs and skulls arranged in a nice pattern. Instead there were several glass cases with small medallions, some had the looks of gaudy brooches on elaborate stands, others were more subdued. The small piece of bone, hair, cloth, was pressed onto a tiny pillow of satin or velvet, with the Saint’s name on a small piece of paper.

I asked the Sister, why here? Why relics? And she said that as far as she knew, the Vatican “Just kept sending them to us.”

Go figure.

And then, the open house, where I learned all about the good works of the School Sisters of Saint Francis or the SSSFs for short, who are not to be confused with the Sisters of Saint Francis (OSFs) who taught me in high school, and are not to be confused with the Sisters of Saint Joseph, Third Order of Saint Francis, who were my grade school teachers and left me with a legacy of good penmanship, grammar, and major issues.

What impressed me the most about the SSSFs? Well, Mother Alfons, their foundress,
built (and re-built after a fire) their mother house, established several schools, served the sick and elderly, traveled back and forth to Europe, and she did all of this while being tucked, wrapped and bound into several layers of heavily starched cotton and black worsted wool.

I have to say this, I once portrayed a nun for a fundraiser. It was for my grade school’s 75th anniversary and I wore an exact replica of a pre-Vatican II habit. At the dinner, I dropped my napkin and couldn’t bend my neck to find it. I had to ask for help.

So, to Sister Alfons, and all the good Sisters who do so much work around the world, a tip of the wimple to you. The bone room? A tip of the finger.