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St. Nicholas
00:21:04
St. Nicholas of Myra, born around 270 AD in Patara, Lycia (modern-day Turkey), was a 4th-century bishop known for his generosity and devotion to helping the poor. He famously provided dowries for three impoverished sisters, saving them from slavery, and became a symbol of compassion and charity. Celebrated as the patron saint of children, sailors, and merchants, his life inspired countless legends and traditions. St. Nicholas passed away on December 6, 343 AD, and his feast day is marked by acts of giving and remembrance of his selfless spirit.
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You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustan Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live.
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And share their faith.
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Welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Mary, and I am joined with Dr. Arielle Harms here at the Augustine Institute in Florissant, Missouri. Dr. Aryal, thank you for being here today.
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Nice to be with you today, Mary.
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How's life on campus going?
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It's going great. We actually just had a football game with the students. The faculty and staff played the students just a couple days ago.
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Fun.
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Yes.
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Who won?
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It was a tie, actually. So I think we should say that the faculty and staff won because we have several years on the students absolutely to our disadvantage.
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These young students could very easily outrun us.
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It's true. They probably didn't get up sore the next day. Those of us who were on the staff and faculty team did. But we had a good turnout and we played until it got dark.
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Did you make a touchdown?
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I did not make any touchdowns.
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Unfortunate. Next time?
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Yeah, next time. Next time. Couple passes, no touchdowns.
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Very good. Very good. That was so fun. Well, thank you for coming on again today. We would like to learn about St. Nicholas, a very popular saint, and his feast day is coming up on December 6th. So St Nicholas, very beloved, often known as Santa Claus, which we can talk about.
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Yes.
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But let's start with what do we know about. Know about him? Where did he come from? Where did he live?
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Right, good. Those are good questions. We don't actually know a ton about St. Nicholas because he lived so long ago, but he was born in Southern Turkey around the year 270. We do know that.
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Okay, that is a very long time ago. It is.
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Right, right. In the first centuries of Christianity, it wasn't widespread at the time. It was sometimes legal and sometimes not legal, depending on where you were and what time period it was and that kind of thing. But he is raised in a wealthy Christian family. We know that. And also we know that he was orphaned at a young age. Yeah. I don't think we know much or anything about his parents, but. So when he was orphaned, he, because he was raised in a Christian family, recalled the gospel passage of the rich young man. Right. And Jesus's invitation to sell what you have and give to the poor. And that influenced the way, I think, the way he lived and especially what he did when he received the inheritance from his parents. Right. So he used what he inherited to help the poor, the sick, and the needy.
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Okay, one quick question. How, since he lived so long ago. Where do you go to find information about his life? What are the sources that you can read to learn about St. Nicholas? Is it through.
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So maybe stories of lives of the saints. Right. Who will compile different writings? Sometimes, you know, an oral tradition has been written down. But yeah, I couldn't tell you exactly where you might find primary sources about St. Nicholas. I would suggest to just finding a book with lives of the saints in it. He's going to be covered in a little bit of detail there. Right. Including the stories that may have been passed down that we don't have much written about. So I think there are some things that we might know about St. Nicholas that are more legend than, you know, like historical, written down with dates and places and things like that.
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So, okay, we know he was an orphan.
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We know that he was an orphan from a wealthy family. So he was taken care of, but he didn't have. He didn't have that family. But he must have been pretty well known and well liked in his community because he was elected bishop of Myra, but exiled during the persecution of Diocletian around 303. So by the time he was just 30, he was elected bishop.
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Wow.
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Yeah. We also know that he attended the Council of Nicaea in 325. And if that name, Nicaea sounds a little bit familiar, that's where we get the Nicene Creed that we say every Sunday at Mass. This council defended the divinity of Christ against the Arian heresy. And one of the stories that we have from the council is St Nicholas participation in the council, which according to this story, is not simply by wisdom and rhetoric, but also with his fists. Okay, yes. Punching the heretic Arius.
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Did Arius show up at the council?
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Yes, Arius showed up at the council. So there's looking at writings at this time. I forget which father of the church says it, but he says, you know, half the church, or more than half the church was Arian. So there was a real need to correct this misunderstanding about the divinity of Christ, or not misunderstanding. Those who denied the divinity of Christ.
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And that's at. Can you explain what. What Arianism is?
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Yeah. So Arius denied the divinity of Christ, saying that Jesus was as son of God, was not equal to God. Okay, Right. But the council both confirmed Christ's divinity and gave us the way to talk about it that we say every Sunday in the Creed. Right. Consubstantial with the Father.
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Yes. Okay. Okay. And then how do we know he was at Nicaea?
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Because there's a testimony of who was There.
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Who was there. I think that's so interesting that we're able to learn about that. Is there anything else we know? There's so many legends about St. Nicholas.
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There are. There's a ton of legends about St. Nicholas.
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Are we ready to enter legend territory?
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I guess we can enter a little bit of legend territory.
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Okay. Okay. So is St. Nicholas Santa Claus?
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St. Nicholas is the precursor of our modern day Santa Claus, for sure. Yes. Precursor. I think he is Santa Claus. He gives us the model for Santa Claus. Right. As someone who gives, we see that even in his early life, when he, as an orphan, is giving to the poor. Right. His generosity without being recognized. There's a story about St. Nicholas that when he was bishop, I believe he knew about three young women in his diocese that were about to be forced into prostitution because their father didn't have enough money for the dowry necessary to get them married at the time. And so St. Nicholas, at night, when everyone was asleep and no one could see him, would go and drop off the money necessary for the dowry. And the father found it and was able to marry first his oldest daughter, and then St. Nicholas would give it more money, and he was able to marry off the next daughter and then more money and able to marry off the youngest daughter, too, to prevent them from. To prevent them from. Yes. Having to go into prostitution. So he has this generosity that we see. There's other stories and legends about him too, including one about him raising people from the dead.
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Okay, I have not heard. You have not heard this one?
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So there's the story where an innkeeper murders three young men. And I've seen different ways of telling this one. Some said that he preserved them so that during this time of famine, he could sell their bodies to be eaten. Very gruesome here. Right. But there's also just that he had not taken time to dispute, dispose of the bodies yet and had hid them away. And St. Nicholas comes to stay at the same inn, and he receives in a dream that this murder had taken place. These murders had taken place. And so he confronts the innkeeper and then goes to the three bodies and raises the three young men from the dead.
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Wow. Crazy.
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I know.
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That's incredible. Well, I was polling our colleagues at lunch hour asking if they had any questions about St. Nicholas, and a lot of them are very curious about the shoe tradition.
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Okay.
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Can you share where that came from? Legend, how? Legend versus truth. It might be on the spectrum of accuracy to St. Nicholas Life.
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Yeah, I don't know about the shoes specifically. Right.
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And to Explain maybe what the SHU tradition is in.
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Yeah, that would be good. Right. So tradition, and I know people who do this today. I have done it myself. Right. Where on the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas. So the night of December 5th, you put your shoes out and St. Nicholas is said to leave gifts in your shoes. Right. And so in the morning, you wake up and your shoes have gifts from St. Nicholas in them. It's kind of a fun tradition to bring the lives of the saints into our own lives today. But we might say, how does this match with St. Nicholas? And I think it goes back to the story that I told about the three young women whose father didn't have enough for the dowry. And St. Nicholas would overnight drop off the money. Right. He may not have put it in their shoes, but he did. It was clear what it was for because of the amount of it. Right. So we put our shoes out knowing that our shoes are our own so that we get the gifts that are for us. So I think that's where that tradition comes from is this story and others like it, where St. Nicholas finds a need that someone has and gives to the people who have that need.
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That is beautiful and makes sense. Very good. Thank you for helping explain that story. Are there other traditions of St. Nicholas that are potentially true? Did he carry toys in a bag? Are all these kind of fabrications of like you're saying his generosity? Right.
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I think that's all added to his generosity. Right. I mean, that's our modern day Santa Claus, who I think comes out of the St. Nicholas tradition. But St. Nicholas was a little bit more practical of a. Not that he wasn't generous like Santa Claus, but more practical and looking first at what people actually needed.
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Right. And for their great good. Can you go back to the story, though, in the Council of Nicaea of the legend, he punched Arius.
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That's all we have of that legend, is that, you know, he did not. He was defending the divinity of Christ and that passion. For this is what I believe, that Jesus Christ was both God and man, not some lesser type of being. And Arius, I mean, we call him a heretic because it wasn't just that he believed wrong things. Because I'm sure as many of us come to learn more, we realize that some of the ideas we had previously weren't quite right. But we usually leave those behind. We don't insist on holding on to them. So that was Arius problem, not that he believed something wrong, because otherwise we'd all be in trouble.
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Yes, we all get Punched.
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Right. But that he insisted on holding onto it and not just holding onto it for himself, but also teaching it. Right.
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Okay.
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So St. Nicholas was zealous for the true faith and willing to defend it passionately, not just with words.
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Yes. That is a great aspect that I think often gets forgotten about St Nicholas as we pivot to. Like you're starting to bring up the legacy to the church, how he's influenced the church today. How. Would you share some practical applications of how he's impacted the life of the church today?
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Yeah, I mean, I think he's one of the best known saints. Right. Maybe not as a saint, but I think in the Western world, we know Santa Claus. Right. And we can see that spirit of generous giving at Christmastime as part of the legacy of St. Nicholas. We also have, you know, him as one of the fathers of the Council of Nicaea to thank for the creed that we say every Sunday at Mass.
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That he so passionately fought for.
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Right. That he passionately fought for and saw that it was necessary. You know, we may think, oh, do words that we say really matter when it comes to talking about our faith? And does it really matter whether we're saying things in just the right way? And in fact, it does. Right. When we're talking about God. Yes. God is beyond our understanding in some sense, but that doesn't mean that we can't use precise language when talking about Him. And precise language helps us think rightly.
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About who God is, which then ultimately love, rightly, worship rightly, all of that.
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Exactly. It leads to everything else because we can't love someone that we don't know.
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Yeah. I think many of us can fall into the trap of reciting the creed in a. That's maybe where we're thinking of other things or fall into a monotonous pattern. But truly remember that every single word of that creed was so precisely fought for and wrestled over out of love for Jesus and his church.
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Right, right. I mean, these councils were. We don't think about it because we don't have any frame of reference for this, but these councils in the early centuries of the Church were really significant for how we talk about God today and think about God today and especially think about the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
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Yes, that makes sense. I've read St. Nicholas, of course, is the tradition. Sorry. St. Nicholas is a patron of children, of sailors as well, and many other things. But of course, children and orphans make sense with what we know about him.
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Right, right. Sailors. There's a story that coming back from the Holy Land. He prayed for a storm at sea to stop. Okay.
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Patron of sailors.
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Yep. So that's where that comes from. He sailed to the Holy Land because he wanted, like many of us who go to the Holy Land, I've never been, but other people have, Right. And they go because they want to walk in the footsteps of Christ. He had the same reasons for it. And so he got on the ship, went to the Holy Land. Not as far for him as for us, but dangerous, probably more dangerous at that time, and made it there safely. When he came to come back, there were storms. And the others, those on the ship thought that they were going to perish. And he, like Christ, goes to the back of the boat and decides to pray and the storm stops.
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That is pretty cool. Okay. You have a background working in parish ministry and diocesan life. How would you use the life of St. Nicholas as a Dre or to evangelize in your community? What are some ways you would incorporate the life of St. Nicholas?
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I really liked connecting St. Nicholas to the Christmas traditions. Right. And having people learn about the real Santa Claus, because we all know the not real figure of the jolly red man who dresses up in his red suit and brings presents on Christmas Eve, flying around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Right. But the real St. Nicholas has a lot more passion and character, as we can see from this story. And so to help people appreciate that, it's always fun to encourage families when they're, you know, trying to live out the liturgical year to institute the tradition of putting shoes out on St. Nicholas Day and having parents put small gifts or toys or even religious things in their children's shoes. Right. It's a great time to give a little religious gift as well as a treat of some kind. Right. To help. Maybe even those bags of coins that we see in the Christmas candies and such. That's from St. Nicholas. Right. Like that's where those come from.
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I have not connected with his dots before and his generosity.
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Exactly. He gave coins. Grab a bag of those and put those in your kids shoes. Right.
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Even thinking of children in your neighborhood or how can you be generous to help take care of the needs of maybe children who are less fortunate in our community?
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We could certainly volunteer for. There's many things going on in communities at this time of year for making sure that those who are less fortunate have food and also maybe presents to give to their kids and things like that.
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I like that. Great. Well, anything else about St. Nicholas that we should learn about or go to to learn more about him?
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Yeah, we've got some stuff on formed about St Nicholas too.
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That's right. Okay.
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One of my favorite things is actually one of the kids videos.
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Which one?
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So it's from the Saints and Heroes collections.
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Okay.
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Nicholas, the boy who became Santa.
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Okay.
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And I remember watching that video as a child. Right. In Catholic school. That would be like the highlight. Watching these videos during our Catholic school religion time. And now you can get it unformed and I can watch it anytime. But it's not just for kids. I actually showed it my youth group several years ago asked to watch it.
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Oh, fine.
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Because they had never connected the dots between St. Nicholas and Santa Claus. So to see that connected in a 30 minute animated cartoon video. Oh, yes. And they loved it. So.
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Okay. Yes. I love when I'm babysitting biasing what the kids are going to watch out of wanting to learn about this myself. So I will recommend this show.
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Yes. But we've got other things for adults unformed too. I just can't speak to any of them specifically. As, you know, being this highly recommended, I didn't look forward to watching any of them as a child in religion class or anything like that.
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That makes sense. Well, great. Thank you so much for sharing about the life of St Nicholas, clarifying more legend versus what's closer to the truth and ways that we can liturgically live out his spirit of generosity today and how he represents the heart of Christ and how we can continue that today. So thank you for this reflection and St Nicholas, pray for us.