497. Nicholas: the Saint who doesn’t seem to have been but actually was and now definitely is

 Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker

Bishop of Myra

December 6, 343

Saint Nicholas was Bishop of the city of Myra on the south coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey) in the Fourth Century, back in the days when the Greek-speaking world stretched across much of the eastern Mediterranean. * He is perhaps the most popular, most venerated, most beloved saint in Christian history. Even though Protestants tried to get rid of him, he has kept coming back in one form or another. Even since 1969 when the Roman Catholic Church “demoted” him and made his observance optional, Saint Nicholas himself has never become optional.

• Yes, boys and girls. Santa Claus was Greek.

For example, since that time an American “Saint Nicholas Center” * has come into existence, centered in Holland, Michigan, of all places, in conjunction with the Virginia  Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, of all things. Their purpose: “To educate people of faith, and the wider public, about the true St. Nicholas, and why he is important in today’s world.” 

• https://www.stnicholascenter.org/

This is an excellent source of all sorts of material about the saint, for both adults and children. However, so far as I have read (which, granted, isn’t all that far – they have so much material!) I don’t think they deal directly with the big question:

Did Saint Nicholas actually exist?

Unlike Our Lord Jesus Christ and many of the early saints – from Saint Luke and Saint Paul in First Century, to the Martyr Perpetua and Saint Athanasius the Great who lived at the same time as Nicholas – we possess no contemporary documentary evidence for Saint Nicholas’ existence. Some early chronographers refer to an account of Saint Nicholas’ life, said to have been written soon after his death, but that is long lost.

Here, thanks to Saint Nicholas Center, is an easily accessible list of his “hagiographies”:

• https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas/stories-legends/classic-sources

These make easy and fascinating reading – albeit noting the flowery style common in those days when people had more time to listen. However, note carefully that the earliest known written “Life of Saint Nicholas” doesn’t appear till about the Ninth Century – six centuries after his death. (To give context: six hundred years before 2024 would place us back in the 1400s!)

Some stories passed down in Myra about Saint Nicholas

Should we put these under the category of “legends”?  but they do tell us the sort of compassionate pastor Bishop Nicholas was, how his people in Myra loved him and remembered him. And people in those days did have better “communal memories” than we do.

1 How did Nicholas become a bishop? His Uncle (also named Nicholas) was Bishop of Patara, just to the north of Myra, and trained him well in the Faith. When a new bishop was needed in Myra, his nephew Nicholas was the obvious choice, because of his piety and love.

2  Three young girls from a poor family had no dowry * and were going to be forced into destitution or worse in order to survive, till one by one they found bags of gold on the floor. With the third girl they kept watch and found Bishop Nicholas by night throwing the gold through the window.

• Money paid by the bride to the groom’s family. Why? Perhaps to help pay for establishing the household. Perhaps to give the bride some independent financial stability in case she needed it. In my case I would have gladly done the opposite: paid my wife’s family in order to marry their daughter. But they never asked.

3  Bishop Nicholas (or perhaps before he was bishop) was traveling by sea, and a fierce storm arose. People on board asked him to pray, and by his prayers he settled the storm. This is portrayed in many of his icons.

4  Three boys had been killed by an innkeeper in a fit or rage – child abuse is not a new thing – and he had hid their bodies in a pickle barrel. Bishop Nicholas found them and restored them to life.

5  Three soldiers (perhaps officers) from Myra were falsely sentenced to death. Nicholas appeared to the Emperor in a dream – terrifying him –  and threatened him with hellfire if he didn’t release them, which he did.

And there were more.

Missing Evidence

What happened to Nicholas during Diocletian’s Great Persecution? A story says he was imprisoned, but we have no definite evidence of this.

Did Nicholas attend the First Ecumenical Council, called in 325 by the new Emperor Constantine, in Nicaea – right across Asia Minor from Myra? Oddly, his name is not in any of the records. This is the legendary story which explains it: When the heretic Arius began to sing one of his pop songs about how Jesus really wasn’t God – “There was a time when the Son was not” – Nicholas was so enraged * that he went over and popped Arius a “good one”, and got himself expelled from the Council. The story makes for a super Saint Nicholas Day children’s pageant! but entirely undocumentable. The records of the Council do not mention it.

• “jolly old Saint Nicholas…”!

So why should we believe in the existence of Saint Nicholas?

The evidence is circumstantial – but solid.

1  Because from the beginning the people of Myra commemorated their Bishop Nicholas on December 6. Ir has always been the custom in the Church to honor holy men and women on the day of their death, their entrance into heaven. * Also in the early days, the Divine Liturgy (Mass, Holy Eucharist) would be celebrated on the tombs of departed holy ones, also providing a means of continuity. This is why we still celebrate Saint Nicholas today, December 6.

• Did they consider Nicholas a “saint”? I’m sure you know that the English word “saint” is a form of the Latin “sanctus”, “holy”, the same as the Greek Agios/Άγιος. It does not take an ecclesiastical council to determine whether someone is holy. Almost always you know it when you see it.

This is why, not 200 years after his death, a new Saint Nicholas Church was built in Myra by order of Emperor Theodosius II, over the site of the church where he had served as bishop. His relics were laid in a sarcophagus there.  That is to say, devotion to Saint Nicholas had been flourishing for two centuries.

2  Because from the beginning, and continuing yet today, the body of Saint Nicholas has been exuding a water-like substance with healing properties, which has been called “myrrh”, for lack of knowing what else to call it. (Early Christians turned it into a pun: “Myrrh from Myra”!} * This also would seem legendary, except for one thing: Saint Nicholas’ body continues to produce this myrrh today. He lies now in Bari, Italy, in a crypt below San Nikola Roman Catholic Basilica. (How he came to be there is a story unto itself – no time for it here.)

• A very few other saints relics have flowed myrrh – for one example, Saint Demetrios of Theealoniki.

Once a year, on his feast day, his tomb is opened, and priests draw out myrrh for the coming year. (They’ve had it tested. It has no bacterial content. His body, by the way, is said to be in pretty good shape for someone seventeen centuries old.) I’ve been there – it is a very holy place – where I obtained a bottle of it for anointing purposes at Saint Nicholas Church, Cedarburg. In other words, we at Saint Nicholas possess some of clear physical evidence for the existence, the continuing existence of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra.

But why has Saint Nicholas become one of the most popular saints?

It’s because of his miracles * which have continued. What else could explain it? Otherwise, how many people would be interested in the story of an obscure bishop in an obscure city seventeen centuries ago?  Like my dear Saint Nektarios, Saint Nicholas has been very busy ever since his death. From all over the Christian world, from the Fourth Century till now, have come reports of remarkable answers to prayer, even occasional appearances. Now, I don’t mean these happened every day – but often enough to cause a “stir” among people.

• properly called “signs” or “wonders”. The word “miracle” does not appear in the New Testament. That is why the Holy Orthodox Church titles him “Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker”.

And so, in one way or another, Saint Nicholas  has become patron of children and of sailors, of barrel-makers (!), travelers, fishermen, merchants, toymakers, broadcasters, the falsely accused, repentant thieves, brewers, pharmacists, archers, pawnbrokers, unmarried people, also the people of Aberdeen , Galway, Albania, Russia, Greece, the Hellenic Navy, Liverpool, Bari, Moscow, Amsterdam, Lorraine, and the British Royal School of Church Music. He is also patron of about 400 churches in America, and of no one knows how many thousands around the world = including one in the northern suburbs of Milwaukee. We’ll come to that.

Once again, the Saint Nicholas Center – God bless them – provides a compilation of some of his “miracles”, both ancient and modern from all over the world.  Read and be startled:

https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas/stories-legends/traditional-stories/early-miracles

https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas/stories-legends/modern-miracles

The above are listed by country. Under “Modern” in “The United States”, I hope you’ll read the item: “St. Nicholas comes to Juneau; why the Tlinglit are Orthodox”. You might also read about the myrrh-streaming icon of Saint Nicholas in Michigan City, Indiana, of all places.

Here’s another assortment provided by Saint Elisabeth’s Convent, Minsk, Belarus. I think there are some duplications here – haven’t had time to check them all.

https://catalogueofstelisabethconvent.blogspot.com/2017/12/18-modern-day-miracles-of-st-nicholas.html

The story of my experience with Saint Nicholas

I know many of you have heard this before, in which case you may skip to the Comments at the end and write “Why are you telling this again?” However some new readers do not know the story, and besides I just love telling it. Humor me.

This is not the story of anything I’ve done. If it were, it would not be appropriate for me to tell it. It is the story of how Saint Nicholas took hold of me when I needed him, and when he needed a new church in Milwaukee.

Back in 1985 I was a dejected Episcopal (Anglican) priest, pastor of my parish for nearly twenty years. At the time I thought the Episcopal Church had moved away from me. Looking back, I now see that I had moved away from it. I was becoming Orthodox, though I didn’t quite realize it. I do remember wondering about it.

My frustration was so obvious that my parish generously gave me the summer off to get myself together, and some money with which to do that. Dianna and I and our teenage kids Jennifer and David did Western Europe for a month. Then I traveled on alone to Greece.

I had always wanted to see Greece. Someone had sent me a flier advertising a conference on Crete for Americans who wanted to learn about Greece and Orthodoxy. Perfect! During the conference, I was  startled because I kept giving not Anglican answers but Orthodox ones. Hmm… thought I.

One evening we visited the local Bishop Irenaeus and some of his flock. I was deeply moved, even though I understood not a word he said: his obvious love for his people, his good humor, his kindliness. That night I wrote in my trip diary “Just what a bishop should be like. Remember that face”.

After that I spent almost a week on a Greek island where I saw ordinary Orthodoxy in action. Again I understood very little, but I fell in love with it.

Two weeks later I saw “that face” again in an icon shop near the Metropolitan Cathedral in Athens. It was the face of Saint Nicholas. I spent too much and bought the icon. I had to have “that face”.

When I got home, my wife could see something had changed in me. She asked “Do you want to be Orthodox?” I said “No”. I was lying.

I hung the icon on a wall in my Episcopal church with a candle beside it. (I knew that much.)  One evening after Evensong (Vespers) a woman said to me, “Have you noticed how his expression changes?” I said “No… …” But I watched, and sure enough. I don’t mean the paint moved. It didn’t. But something happened. Sometimes he was happy, sometimes stern, sometimes serene. One person whom I trusted suggested he was reflecting my emotions. No, he wasn’t. Sometime he agreed with me, sometimes he definitely did not.

Do you see what was happening here? Saint Nicholas was calling me into relationship with him. I was no longer calling the icon “it”. I was calling Nicholas “he”.

One evening I was particularly demoralized. By then I knew I needed to be Orthodox, but I didn’t see any way to get here. We had to get our kids through college. I felt responsible for my parishioners. How could I just walk out on them? Maybe after I retired, but that would be twenty years. So I looked at the icon, and he looked back at me like “the cat that swallowed the canary”, as we used to say. That most definitely was not how I felt! I got mad at him: What do you mean being so pleased with yourself when I’m so miserable?

And then,,,I must tell this very carefully. I didn’t tell anybody about it for a long time, not even my wife, lest people think I was going mad. And then… Saint Nicholas told me that Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church was coming. I didn’t hear words. It wasn’t like that at all. I can’t describe it. It just was, plain as could be.

After that I was scared, almost terrified – how was this going to happen? But I felt absolutely sure it would happen. Over the next year or so, all the pieces fell into place in a remarkable way. No time to describe all that here. Anyway, I guess the best evidence that I wasn’t losing my marbles is the fact that Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, USA, has now existed for over 35 years. It happened. The only explanation I can imagine is that our Lord Jesus decided He needed an Orthodox Church here in the north Milwaukee suburbs, and He said to His servant Nicholas: “Why don’t you see what you can do about this?” And so it happened.

In the process I’ve learned something which would have been completely unimaginable to me before: Sometimes it’s not that we have to petition the saints. Sometimes the saints come chasing after us. Believe me. I know.

During those 35 years many of us have worked our tails off for Saint Nicholas Church. We’ve had our ups and downs, as all churches do. But through it all, I’ve never doubted that this truly is Saint Nicholas’ Church.  He started it. I didn’t. We didn’t. He did.

Once in a while I’ve been tempted to doubt this. Can’t do it! Honestly, I just can’t do it.

 

The icon which I purchased in Greece has all this time presided at the entrance to our church, so we will never forget this  He’s in charge here. This church belongs to him.

So when people ask me, “Did you found Saint Nicholas Church?” I answer: “No. Saint Nicholas did.”

Next Week and the Week after Next: The Christmas Stories – are they real?