ovde - vera znanje mir

During the church service the act of beatification was performed by Pope John
Paul II who read the decree proclaiming the beatification of Ivan Merc.
While the songs in honour of the newly beatified were sang, the believers in a
procession brought to the altar the reliquary of Ivan Merc. The reliquary is made of
silver and contains the bone of Ivan Merc, the removed one from the skeleton,
marked the beginning of the initiation. The symbolic return of the bone to his
portrait, placed by the oltar space, will mark the end of the phase of aggregation,
and by this, the end of the whole process of initiation. The bone is the indicator of
the beginning and of the end of a process. The Eucharistic celebration went on,
and Ivan Merc after religious service was treated as Beatified.
Characteristic for the phase of aggregation is the inversion of the procedures
performed during the phase of separation. The separation of Ivan Merc started with
removing one rib bone from his skeleton. That moment symbolized the beginning
of the abandon of his previous status. During aggregation the same bone is
returned to Merc, in a symbolic way. The bone as a relic is brought to the oltar in
front of the image of his owner. The same bone changed its status at the same
time as its owner. By the act of beatification the bone has become a relic, being
one part of the relics of a beatified person.
There are 3 phases in this process: separation (when the rib was removed), liminal
phase (when the initiate is in a process of transition, that's why we call that phase
liminal) and aggregation when the rib is symbolically returned). So, we can see that
Ivan Merc passed through the rite of passage – passed initiation.