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.
There’s no satisfying you. ;-)
“There’s no satisfying you. ;-)”
And now there’s AB saying that Rome’s the focus of evil on the planet when all along its been me! :)
I am profoundly unimpressed by that sort of rhetoric (see post 36 for egregious example) ...
Now ... if you think I'm misunderstanding you ... fine. If you think I've misperceived your motivations ...
I don't know what you're thinking. I can't read your mind.
I can only read your words ... and the sentiments they express (as best I can understand them), are ugly.
I'f you think that I've misunderstood you ...
I'm from Missouri.
Show me.
AB, you misunderstood me if you think I think Rome is the fous of evil of the universe. If you think I think the Pope is an accessory to the theft of the bones of +Nicholas, you’re right. If you think I think Rome is self righteously arrogant, you’re right again. But AB, Rome, like Constantinople and Moscow, is a long way from this thread, our friendships and our home parishes.
AB, I bet you have already guessed that I don’t care if you think my sentiments are “ugly”. I think ecclesial thievery and heresy, as a general matter, are, but then again, I don’t expect as much from hierarchs and my all too human co-religionists as you appear to.
A GREEK living in Asia Minor - where Greek Hellenes HAD lived for thousands of years - and then hundreds of years after his death, merchants of Bari organized a predatory expedition to the burial place of Nicholas, stole the bones, reburied them in Bari.
“...and then hundreds of years after his death, merchants of Bari organized a predatory expedition to the burial place of Nicholas, stole the bones, reburied them in Bari.”
And have made a fortune off them ever since and since the Vatican demoted +Nicholas because it cannot confirm he was ever canonized, one has to assume the only interest Rome has in keeping the stolen relics in one of its churches is, big surprise, money!
The Byzantine Orthodox choral music dedicated to Saint Nicholas on this site is particularly ethereal:
http://ancient-anatolia.blogspot.com/2009/10/saint-nicholas-of-myra.html
>> a manifestation of how some (too many in, my opinion), are needlessly holding on to centuries-old grudges
Exactly right.
Well what do you know...somehow the Saint’s relics made their way to...Ireland!
Well it didn’t take long for the abominable Turks to demand that the relics be returned!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8432314.stm
According to the BBC article:
While Christmas is by and large not celebrated in Muslim Turkey, the Christmas figure of Santa Claus certainly is in the Mediterranean town of his birth.snip
Prof Nevzat Cevik, head of archaeological research in Demre, says Saint Nicholas had made it clear during his life that he wanted to be buried in his home town.
Eleni121, do you still feel the bones should be returned to Turkey?
Barring that dangerous move, I strongly suggest the Holy Mountain at Mt. Athos or the Moscow Patriarchate. The relics should temporarily rest in either of those two places. But - should the Cathedral at Bari return to its original Orthodox Christian faith, I would consider keeping the remains there.
Are you suggesting that the Catholic faith is not orthodox?
Moscow or St. Petersburg. There the relics can be placed in a temple or monastery catholikon where they can be venerated by people who have no doubt as to the sainthood of +Nicholas.
The Holy Mountain would be appropriate but of course access to them would be severely limited.
NYer, the Latin Church does not know if +Nicholas is really a saint. Were the Latin Church to return to its traditional Orthopraxis and beliefs, those doubts would be gone and but for the fact that the relics are stolen and in the hands of the successors of the original thieves, it might be appropriate that they stay with a particular church which indeed does venerate +Nicholas as a saint.
Not this thing again. Yes, we do. St. Nicholas must be one of the "ones in doubt" then, like St. Cecilia and St. Christopher, where some nut decided that they probably didn't exist - and then started teaching that. That doesn't make it true. On this particular topic we're fighting a war from the inside. I actually heard someone say that St. Cecilia probably never existed and then less than a year later I went to her original grave at San Calista.
Remember, there are forces actively trying to destroy the Faith by casting doubt on a whole lot of teaching and Tradition. From inside the Vatican. It frustrates us just as much as it does everyone else.
No less a "nut" than Pope Paul VI, the infallible Vicar of Christ on Earth, demoted him because he found no evidence that he had ever been "canonized"! Imagine the irony for us Orthodox that the Ustasha cardinal Stepanic, whose name is already called upon by Latins to intercede with Christ for them, is on the road to sainthood, while +Nicholas' sainthood is in doubt because a pope like Paul VI couldn't find any evidence that he had ever been canonized.
The Latin laity really ought to do something about that sort of nonsense.
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