Posted on 12/06/2009 5:48:31 AM PST by NYer
.- Today, December 6, the faithful commemorate a Turkish bishop in the early church who was known for generosity and love of children. Born in Lycia in Asia Minor around the late third or fourth century, St. Nicholas of Myra is more than just the inspiration for the modern day Santa.
As a young man he is said to have made a pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt in order to study in the school of the Desert Fathers. On returning some years later he was almost immediately ordained Bishop of Myra, which is now Demre, on the coast of modern day turkey.
The bishop was imprisoned during the Diocletian persecution and only released when Constantine the Great came to power and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
One of the most famous stories of the generosity of St. Nicholas says that he threw bags of gold through an open window in the house of a poor man to serve as dowry for the man’s daughters, who otherwise would have been sold into slavery.
The gold is said to have landed in the family’s shoes, which were drying near the fire. This is why children leave their shoes out by the door, or hang their stockings by the fireplace in the hopes of receiving a gift on the eve of his feast.
St. Nicholas is associated with Christmas because of the tradition that he had the custom of giving secret gifts to children. It is also conjectured that the saint, who was known to wear red robes and have a long white beard, was culturally converted into the large man with a reindeer-drawn sled full of toys because in German, his name is “San Nikolaus” which almost sounds like “Santa Claus.”
In the East, he is known as St. Nicholas of Myra for the town in which he was bishop. But in the West he is called St. Nicholas of Bari because, during the Muslim conquest of Turkey in 1087, his relics were taken to Bari by the Italians.
St Nicholas is the patron of children and of sailors. His intercession is sought by the shipwrecked, by those in difficult economic circumstances, and for those affected by fires. He died on December 6, 346.
the Italian peninsula being Byzantine Greek...ho hum....that fact does not give the Roman Bishop the right to keep the relics that were stolen over the objections of the holy men who cared for them at the time and have been kept for so many years in Bari.
The saint lived and died in the land that is now part of the country of Turkey. In that sense, the Turks claim him as their own — he was not a Turk ethnically, that’s certain, but he was also most likely not a Greek ethnically, maybe with some Greek blood, but not A Greek. He would have considered himself Roman. Ethnically he may have been any one of, or a mixture of Ionian Greek, Lydian, Armenian, Syrian, Roman, Galatian, Persian etc. etc. Linguistically, he was pretty definitely Latin, with a knowledge of Greek. Religion-wise he was Christian of the orthodox (with a small ‘o’) faith.
Hint: Repetition of lies can never make them true.
Your comments provoke sadness....
And your comments are really sad. at no point did I say he was Turkish. READ it.
Hey — How about you go your way into la la land and leave me in peace.
There are other collegial ways to deal with this if only the Bishop in Rome would acknowledge the thievery and humbly discuss the outrages.
You know, some of the responses from the Orthodox on here are a manifestation of how some (too many in, my opinion), are needlessly holding on to centuries-old grudges (oh, you Latins did this in this year, you Latin did that). Sorry to be blunt, but that’s how it appears to me.
And it appears to me that centuries of inter Christian religious strife in the West since the Great Schism, culminating in the collapse of Christianity as a force for much of anything in the Western 1st World hasn’t taught the arrogant thieves and their apologists in the Latin Church a darn thing. As for the great respect and veneration shown by the Latin Church to +Nicholas, that’s absolute nonsense. 40 years ago the Vatican “demoted” him and made his feast day an “optional” one along with a number of other saints. You know what the reason was, P? Rome, almighty Rome, had no record of his canonization!
“I dispute the very statement that he was Greek ethnically — he would have considered himself a citizen of the Roman Empire (our narrow ethnic terms would be meaningless to him).”
Absolute nonsense. The Eastern Romans were very proud that they were part of an Hellenic culture and Myra was a Lycian city populated virtually 100% with ethnic Greeks in +Nicholas’ time, as it remained until the 1920s.
“Why should the Bishop of Rome “humbly” discuss something he had nothing to do with? —> your pride does not go well with orthodoxy.”
Because by retaining the relics in one of his churches he is an accomplice.
no record of his canonization
Beyond belief! How shameful.
All the more reason to send the glorious Saint to a place where he will rest in peace and honor away from the souless madding crowds who have betrayed him.
As a devotee of the pre-1969 Latin Catholic liturgy, you won’t get me to defend the tinkering with the calendar (which also got eliminated feast days for the Holy Machabees and St. Barbara, among others). However, the whole “optional memorial” issue for St. Nicholas glosses over one detail- what priest in his right mind ISN’T going to remember St. Nicholas on December 6? The only reason why he wouldn’t is if it fell on a Sunday, as it did this year.
Gee, I wonder why they changed the article....
“The only reason why he wouldn’t is if it fell on a Sunday, as it did this year.”
The only priests who didn’t commemorate him this past Sunday were Latin ones and perhaps the Maronites, though about them I don’t know. All the other churches commemorate the saints whose feast day it is on Sunday at the close of the liturgies.
“However, the whole “optional memorial” issue for St. Nicholas glosses over one detail- what priest in his right mind ISN’T going to remember St. Nicholas on December 6?”
Yeah, right. That’s probably why Paul VI had no problem demoting him.
The Sunday feast of the Resurrection trumps all saints' feast days in the Latin calendar. You probably knew that.
Yeah, right. That’s probably why Paul VI had no problem demoting him.
I have no idea why Paul VI made it an optional feast. He did a lot of thing willy nilly. As I said, I'm a traditional Catholic. Even on the pre-1969 sanctoral calendar, St. Nicholas wouldn't have been commemorated because of the Sunday feast of the Resurrection.
Rule Two: In case of doubt, see Rule One.
All Else is Irrelevant.
Yes, I did know that. And so far as I know, only the Latin Church does that (unless as I said, the Maronites follow that Latin practice). It surprises me that the Latins show such respect for Sundays as the feast of the Resurrection, yet cavalierly violate the 20th canon of Nicea which prohibits kneeling on Sundays specifically because it is the feast of the Resurrection. :)
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