What You Never Knew about: St Nicholas

                                                              +AJPM+

THE MILLENNIAL CATHOLIC:

 I figured I'd do another list of things people don't know about  a particular figure, with this one being the subject of today's feast day: St Nicholas.

1. He's actually Greek.
That's right: his parents were both Greek and he was raised in Greece. Some may think he was Turkish but that's only because he was a bishop of a Turkish area. This also explains why St Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors.

So come Christmas Eve, you might want to leave ouzo more than cookies.

2. He got the name Santa Claus because the English misheard a version of his name.

It may shock some people today, but when America was being colonized, the English settlers didn't celebrate Christmas.
Why? Because they were mostly Puritans who viewed Christmas as too Catholic or too "popish." As more people started settling in the area, more traditions and customs came over as well. One such group were the Dutch who brought their tradition of a gift giver. The English children were intrigued by this but neither they nor their parents were used to hearing Dutch words, so when they heard the name Sinterklaas, they thought the name was Santa Claus.

3. He once saved three young women from prostitution.

In life, Nicholas knew a man with three daughters. At one point, he wanted to marry them off but had no money to do so. Desperate because of his situation, he was getting ready to sell his daughters into prostitution.
Nicholas, not wanting to have the young women go into a life of sin but knowing full well the man was too proud to ask for help, came by his house late in the night and put three bags of gold coins down the man's chimney.
This is why some depictions of Nicholas has him holding three coin bags (sometimes three gold balls; they stand for the same thing).

4. He signed off on one of the key creeds of Christianity.

That creed is called the Nicene Creed, one of the oldest and most widely used creeds in Christianity. I'll get to the need for writing it in a moment, but for now, I'll say the creed is used to clarify the relationship between Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Unlike the Apostle's Creed, it does address Jesus' divinity but it does not say one needs the Catholic faith to be saved. This is why some Protestants use the creed, like Lutherans and Baptists but not used by Mormons or Jehovah's Witness (then again those last two aren't real Christians anyway so what difference does it make?)


5. He is a Catholic bishop.

This is the reason why he is portrayed with red robes, as that's the garment of the bishop office---unless someone is from an area with a more Eastern Rite or Eastern Orthodox influence. In that case, he wears purple robes.


7. One of the key parts of his life has long been misunderstood.

This is going back to the Nicene Creed mentioned earlier. What I did not bring up was why the creed was written in the first place.
At the time, a bishop named Arius was promoting the idea that Jesus was less than the Father, even going so far as to extend the teaching to saying Jesus is a created being. This became so rampant in the Church a special meeting of bishops was called by none other than Constantine. Nicholas, being a bishop himself, went to the meeting to settle the issue. He with the other bishops sat back while Arius presented his case for this stand.

Now pretty much everyone gets that part right; this is the part people get wrong.

According to the ignorant, Nicholas got up, punched Arius right in the face, sat back down and suffered no consequences for his actions and since Nicholas is a saint, this supposedly shows hypocrisy in Christianity.

This is of course NOT what actually happened.

Here's what it did happen: Nicholas did go up and strike Arius but it was a slap, not a punch.
Second of all, while a bishop arguing with another bishop wasn't frowned upon (as long as it was in the spirit of fraternal correction), a bishop striking another bishop was looked down on…especially considering he did it right in front of the emperor.
Third, he in fact did not get away with it. The other bishops were so shocked and horrified, they banned him from the remainder of the council, stripped him of his bishop authority and vestments, and confined him to a make-shift quarters wrapped in chains.
When the jailer checked on him the next mourning, he found the chains unwrapped and Nicholas back in his vestments.
This was taken as a sign to give Nicholas his office back..which they did and ruled against Arius.

What You Never Knew About: St Francis of Assisi

                                                           +AJPM+

THE MILLENNIAL CATHOLIC:

Welcome to a new series on my blog titled What You Never Knew About. This will focus on a particular issue, person or trait about the Catholic Church most people don't know much about.

With Pope Francis' arrival to America, what better way to start this off than with the Holy Father's namesake, St Francis of Assisi. People only know him as a monk that loved animals, and some might know him as a statue in a garden but not much else.

Yet he deserves to be known for so much more, like….


                                      He was the first recorded case of stigmata.

That's right: the phenomena of Christ's wounds appearing on a holy person first occurred with him. Although Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians that he bears "on his body the marks of Jesus", Francis brought it to the forefront two years before his death. Although it's not clear whether he was traveling alone or with him, there's no reason to think he was lying about it.
It should also be noted that of all the confirmed stigmata cases, the vast majority are found either in the Franciscan order or orders who follow the Franciscan rule of life.

                                           He invented the Nativity scene.

That depiction you see every year of the baby Jesus with Mary, Joseph and the Magi? That came from Francis. He initially created it to show the humble beginnings of the Lord of Lords after he visited the Holy Land. We think of it now as a collection of statues, but his involved real life people.
Another interesting note: his nativity was not done in his native Assisi but in Greccio, about 56 miles away.

                One of his followers would be the first woman to write a monastic rule of life. 

That woman is known as St Clare of Assisi, founder of the Poor Clares. Some mistakenly believe she is Francis' biological sister, but this is not the case: they just happened to come from the same town. The rule of their order was not approved by the sitting Pope until the day before Clare died.

            He set in motion the tradition of gaining a plenary indulgence just by setting foot in a parish.

This is called the Portiuncula indulgence, named after the little church inside the mother church for the Franciscan order. The story goes Francis built a small hut near a tiny chapel called Our Lady of the Angels and began gathering followers. The local bishop gave Francis custody of the chapel after being impressed by Francis' group and as the years went by, people started building a little church inside the main church. The indulgence at first only applied to Franciscan run churches but over time came to be extended to all parishes on Aug 2nd (the feast of Our Lady of the Angels), the namesake of the specific parish and founder of religious orders (if the parish is run by a specific order). 

                                      He wrote the overlooked Canticle of the Sun.

If you've read Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato si', you might know about this one already. Much like a litany focusing on saints of an order or Opus Dei's Preces, the Canticle of the Sun summarizes the spirituality of the Franciscans. Although it seems like it might have been written by a hippie Dead-Head, I don't know of any hippie that advises people to not die in a state of mortal sin. 
Another interesting side note: the Canticle is considered among the first literary works to be written in Italian. 

                                          He did NOT write the Prayer of St Francis.

That's right: the prayer that begins "make me an instrument of your peace" was NOT actually written by St Francis. Easy way to tell: St Francis died in 1226 and there is no record of this prayer before 1912.
If this prayer brings you closer to God, wonderful..but stop saying Francis wrote it.
Speaking of things Francis didn't do….

                                           He did not invent the Franciscan Crown.

That was invented by a Franciscan novice several years after Francis' death. The name stuck because it was associated with his order.

                                 He tried to negotiate a peaceful end to the Crusades

Yeah…a Christian tried to bring an end to the Crusades…try wrapping your mind around that one, atheists.
Not a lot of information can be found online about this, but I do recommend looking at a researched book on this subject. Sure, he didn't succeed but it was still worth a try.


           Although he is associated with animals, he is NOT the patron saint of veterinarians.

That title belongs (depending on who you ask) to either St Blaise, St James the Greater or St Eligius. Francis is however the patron saint of ecology, based mostly around the Canticle of the Sun mentioned earlier.