St. Nicholas, Where Are You????

Happy feast, to those on the Gregorian calendar, because today is St. Nicholas' feast day. Fish, wine, and oil (yummmmm...oil.....) :-) Unfortunately, wine is now a permanent "fast" for me, along with anything else made from or by molds or fungus. But that's a story for a different blog day. Suffice it to say that to be an Orthodox Christian and be unable to eat bread, bagels, most crackers, or pita makes life, um, interesting. Yeah....that's the word (sigh).

But back to St. Nicholas. Father's sermon last night on this topic reminded us that St. Nicholas was no fat, jolly elf in a red velvet suit. Of course he may have had the beard, as he *was* an Orthodox bishop, lol! He was the bishop of the city of Myra, in what is now Turkey. Son of a comfortably well-to-do couple, when they died, he took all his inheritance and distributed it to the poor. According to the story best known about him, he rescued three young women from being sold into prostitution by their destitute pagan father, tossing a bag of gold coins into their shoes for three nights running. When, on the third night, the father caught him and said, "Aha! Bishop Nicholas, I see you!" St. Nicholas then replied, "And God sees YOU." The story says that the father converted and became a devout Christian at that point.

Ah, but St. Nicholas did more. He fought for the faith...literally. At the First Ecumenical Council, he became so incensed at Arius that he smacked him in the face! As bishops are enjoined from violence of any sort, this meant that he was defrocked and, if memory serves, the Emperor also had him jailed. He was released and reinstated the next day, after every single bishop had the same dream, in which the Theotokos presented Nicholas his omophorion (bishop's stole) again, and Christ presented him a book of the Gospels. Not being stupid, the bishops "got it", Nicholas was reinstated...and Arius defeated and condemned.

Some stories say that at one point in his life St. Nicholas himself was a sailor; and there are stories about him saving a ship of sailors that was foundering off the coast. One of the first commissions of an icon I ever did was an icon of St. Nicholas for a man who was intending, once he retired, to take off and sail around the world. He wanted an icon of St. Nicholas in the cabin with him, and I was asked to write it.

St. Nicholas, all in all, was a balanced man. He was merciful, not in judgment or in law, but in a proactive, practical way. He was a humble man. He could easily have swept into the marketplace and bought the girls' freedom himself; but he tossed the gold into the shoe of each girl the night before she was to be sold, so that his role (except for nosy Dad!) would be anonymous. He was a strong man, willing to stand up for what was right, no matter the cost.

And he was a wonderworker. Because he was a man of prayer, because he was a man of humility, God used him in numerous miracles, and he is still known as St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. He is, apart from the Forerunner and the Theotokos, the only saint specifically mentioned by name every week in the daily prayers. Every Thursday the troparion for the apostles (as a group) is prayed...and the troparion for St. Nicholas as well.

Of course, he didn't do a thing (apart from miracles) that you or I *couldn't* do. We can be merciful. We can be proactive, pragmatic, helpful. We can do it without calling attention to ourselves. We can stand up for what is right. We can pray. We can intercede.

Reading about the incidents in the news this week, I thought "St. Nicholas, where are you when we need you?" But that's the wrong question. Where am *I*, when someone needs ME? That's the right one.

Blessings,
Mary Brigid