Not many specifics are known about Roger, except that in death, everyone wanted a piece of him!

Roger was one of the immediate disciples of St. Francis of Assisi, and took seriously the vows of poverty and charity. Roger evinced the gifts of prophecy and miracle-working, and so when he died, people believed that his corpse could continue the miracles. This is how Roger’s head ended up in northwest Spain and the rest of his body in Italy. People would go to touch the (eventual) bones for healings and other deeply held needs to be met.

I’ve touched only several corpses in my life–the first two were my grandmothers and the most recent, my soul friend Kathy, all laid out in their caskets. I did not do so in the belief that this would create any miracles in my life, but as a way of saying Goodbye. While a good Goodbye is a kind of healing, it is not what one thinks of when contemplating “miracles.”

But now I wonder whether indeed we make realities by what we believe. I certainly have never believed that touching a dead body would help me in any specific way–and so no miracles have resulted (that I know of). Could this have been different? Did they know something with respect to Roger that perhaps we’ve lost touch with?