Everyone knows who Santa Claus is. But centuries before he became the jolly sleigh-riding elf we all love, St. Nicholas was a bishop in Turkey who performed miracles, got into fisticuffs with a heretic, and, of course, gave out presents. And we can all continue to learn from and be inspired by this unique saint.
Today (Dec. 6) is the feast of St. Nicholas, still a very important feast for Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox Christians. He was bishop of Myra in Turkey. Greek sources say he confessed his faith during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian but survived, although he was imprisoned at least once. His parents were both pious and rich, and when he was orphaned Nicholas dedicated his fortune (which he eventually gave entirely away) to helping the poor.
In one instance, Nicholas saved three poor girls from prostitution and/or slavery by throwing bags of gold in the window. On the third night, when the father caught Nicholas at his secretive charity, the bag of gold is said to have landed in a stocking drying before the fire — eventually that story would inspire the Christmas stockings St. Nicholas still fills today! Of course, not all of his help was monetary. He is said to have raised to life again children who had been murdered and pickled in a brine-tub. You can read more fascinating facts about St. Nicholas in Greg Byrnes’s article.
But there are also plenty of lessons we can learn from St. Nicholas in our own lives. I mentioned the above stories because they remind us how important it is to give alms and to pursue justice. There are numerous Bible passages emphasizing the importance of caring for the poor and sick; in fact, Jesus lists works of mercy to the needy as being the divider between the “sheep” who go to Heaven and the “goats” who go to Hell (see Matt. 25). Jesus heavily emphasizes the importance of prayer and fasting too, but the relationship we have with God should then translate into charity toward others, as it did in the life of St. Nicholas.
Faith and love must and will turn into action if they are true. As Jesus said (Lk. 17:6), “If you had faith like to a grain of mustard seed, you might say to this mulberry tree, Be thou rooted up, and be thou transplanted into the sea: and it would obey you.” Nicholas had such strong faith that, through him, God raised children from the dead!
Many people have heard the revived story of the bishop slapping the heretic Arius in the face in an excess of zeal to defend the divinity of Christ. It is said that Nicholas was deprived of his symbols of office, the pallium and mitre, but had them restored after Christ came in on Nicholas’s side in a vision. You can see a 14th century fresco from Turkey below depicting the incident, and the St. Nicholas Center cites “Byzantine tradition” as the story’s source, indicating either oral sources or written sources no longer extant. So what does this story teach us? For one thing, that we have to be willing to do anything that is not sinful to defend truth.
— Catherine Salgado (@CatSalgado32) December 6, 2023
To some of us, it might sound odd that physical violence could be necessary to defend truth (though admittedly the circumstances for that are fairly narrow). Yet we know that Jesus, who told us to turn the other cheek, used aggression when necessary to stop the profanation of the Temple. “And he found in the temple them that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting. And when he had made, as it were, a scourge of little cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and the money of the changers he poured out, and the tables he overthrew [Jn. 2:14-15].” Just like Jesus, just like St. Nicholas, just like our Founding Fathers, we have to understand that they are things and beliefs and people worth fighting for.
In his homily today, my parish priest noted that St. Nicholas is a perfect saint for the season of Advent leading into Christmas because he believed so strongly in the incarnation of God as man. Furthermore, he suffered and sacrificed for the truth even while going out of his way to bring joy and prosperity to others. Like St. Nicholas, let us zealously defend the truth, renew our faith, and bring joy to others in need this Advent and Christmas season.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member