Nicholas

The Man, the Myth, the Legend

Midweek Advent 1 Vespers

Propers: St Nicholas’ Day, A.D. 2017 B

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Nicholas is the saint who taught me to love the saints.

He taught me that stories of spiritual heroes, of miracles and marvels, of an active, living, untamed God, were not limited to the pages of the Bible or to the Holy Land of 2000 years ago. He showed me that the life of faith is interwoven throughout all of human history, and that to this very day there are those through whom God works inexplicable and awe-inspiring wonders in ways both small and great.

The bones of Nicholas’ story are rather straightforward. He was born in Anatolia in the late third century—modern day Turkey before the Turks arrived—as the only child of aging, faithful parents who for years had prayed to God for a son. His was a happy home, by all accounts. Christianity permeated their life together. Some say that the newborn Nicholas not only stood almost immediately after birth but even raised his arms for the offices of daily prayer.

Alas, those were the days when plague was not uncommon, and an epidemic flashed through their city, claiming the lives of Nicholas’ parents while he was yet young. He then went to live with his uncle in the monastery, but first had to divest himself of his considerable inheritance. For indeed, a rich monk was a contradiction in terms. The story goes that one local family in particular had fallen on hard times, and without proper dowries, their three daughters could not hope to wed. Unmarried women had few options in those days.

Hearing of their plight, Nicholas visited their home on three consecutive nights, each time tossing a bag of gold through the window, one for each daughter. On the third night, the father stayed up to confront their anonymous benefactor, and when caught in the act Nicholas begged him not to tell—so naturally the grateful father told everyone. Some of the gold, it is said, fell into shoes left by the hearth to dry.

His piety and fame grew in spite of one another. He was elected Bishop of Myra, a port town from which stories of this heroic holy monk pulsed along trade routes like arteries out from a heart. He appears to the Emperor of Rome in his dreams, the sailors said. He multiplied grain during a famine, insisted others. I’ve even heard that he raised up three murdered boys from the dead, some replied.

Those in peril on the sea would cry out to Nicholas for intercession with God, and many claimed that those cries had been answered in dramatic fashion: with seas calmed, lives saved, and visions of the bishop himself flying over the rigging of their ships! He could bilocate, they said, appearing in many places at once—a rare gift exhibited only by the mightiest of wonderworking saints.

And when the Emperor called together the first Ecumenical Council of Christian bishops in Nicea, it was Nicholas who had the gall to stand before Caesar and literally punch the heretic Arius in the face for denying the divinity of Christ. Fisticuffs before the Emperor! Who would do such a thing? And so Nicholas was stripped of his Gospel book and stole, the signs of his office, and thrown in jail. Yet who should restore the book and stole to him behind bars but Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary themselves! Unable to argue with such venerable witnesses, the Emperor set Nicholas free.

But the greatest legend of all came posthumously, after Nicholas was interred in his church at Myra. The astounded congregation soon found fragrant floral oil leaking from his tomb—from his very bones! And it would not stop its gentle flow. Nicholas Manna, they called it, holy oil from the relics of a saint. And they bottled it in little vials and sent it all over the eastern Christian world. To this day, in old Orthodox cathedrals, you can still find little niches with icons of St Nicholas and tiny flasks of Nicholas Manna with which to anoint the sick. There are special prayers for its application and everything. Even in the twenty-first century they still bring up fragrant oil from his tomb on the feast of the translation of his relics.

He came to America with the Dutch, of course, though tales of devotion to St Nicholas in New Amsterdam are more farce than fact. We Americanized him with traits he never exhibited in life: a fat gut, a red suit, a sleigh pulled by reindeer. But at the core of all our stories of Santa Claus abides the tale of a saint more astounding by far than any holiday program or poem penned by Clement Moore.

Nicholas was a child of prayer, a bishop and monk, selfless in his charity, heroic in his defense of the downtrodden and oppressed, fearless in the face of injustices and evils. Yet he did the things he did, and gained the fame he had, not through his own sterling virtue and herculean will—but rather Nicholas worked God’s wonders by getting out of the way and letting the Light of Christ shine through his life like the rays of the sun through a pure clear glass. He became a saint not through ambition or pride but by embracing the life of the Christ who lives now within him, the Holy Spirit who has made of him His home.

Let us remember that Christ still walks among us, still healing and teaching and forgiving our sin, no longer as a single human being with but one pair of hands to work, but as billions of believers made one in the Church, the Body of Christ, with Jesus our head and the Spirit our soul. Christ is still at work redeeming and saving and resurrecting this world, through the lives of men like Nicholas—and through the lives of people like us, through you and through me, still sainting sinners, still saving the lost.

Saints still walk among us today, my brothers and sisters, because Christ lives now in us all.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.