Although it is more commonly featured as the "holy place" in horror films, the crypt has a more ancient and venerable history attached to it.

The term crypt comes from the Greek verb "krypto," meaning to hide or conceal, and has always referred to any vault which is housed either wholly or partly under ground.

While we tend to associate crypts with places of burial, in the early church the crypt was also the place where a subterranean chapel, or oratory, commemorating a cherished saint would be found.

Typically, when one of these icons of the faith had passed on to the next world, their remains would be kept and enshrined, literally, in the crypt dedicated to his or her memory.

Eventually chapels became more prevalent fixtures in the main body of the church and the crypt became the place where only the remains remained.

This arrangement was not only practical but profoundly theological; the saints, those whose witness touched the lives of the church, remain the literal and metaphorical ground of our being.

We who walk as yet by faith attempt to follow their example by walking in their ways, confident in the knowledge that the essence of their being lies beneath the very ground on which we walk.

Our own Adamson crypt is a faithful reminder of this sentiment.

One need only recall the memorial inscription that adorns its archway, "Veterum non Immemor" (Do not forget the departed ones), to recognize that crypts are the places where we remember those who should not be forgotten