This is today’s article on BustedHalo which I have to say was one of the more intriguing reflections on the Incorruptible Saints that I’ve seen in ages.
One evening last month, while surfing YouTube, I stumbled across a five-part slideshow on the incorrupt bodies of saints. Having once been a soul mate to television’s ghoulish Wednesday Addams, I launched “Part One,” expecting to get halfway through before my maturing tastes demanded I resume searching for the clip where Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, humiliates the geeks at the Star Wars premier.
To my surprise, the spectacle held me in thrall. In every dead face, sanctity intersected with human nature in some unique and memorable way. St. Jean-Marie Vianney’s fine features hinted at a painful sensitivity. With her mouth half open, St. Veronica Giuliani looked as though she were savoring one of her ecstatic visions. The puppy fat on the face of the child Beata Imelda Lambertini spoke of youthful good health and a life unexpectedly cut short.
But some of the other holy cadavers looked distinctively, well, cadaverous. With skin the color and texture of fine leather and both nose and lips gone, St. Virginia Centurione Bracelli looked like any of the mummies I’d seen in the British Museum. Seated upright, her face and hands blackened, St. Catherine of Bologna looked as though she’d paid a terrible price for nodding off with a lighted cigarette.
The rest is a must read–so check it out here