iacobusm Advent and Christmas, Saints

Lover or Fighter? St. Nicholas of Myra

   

Lover or Fighter?

Well, which is he, lover or fighter? St. Nicholas has the distinction of being one of those saints whose name is known to just about everybody, inside and outside the Church. At the same time, few, at least in the west, know his actual story today. I first published a version of the post below on a different blog on December 6th, 2014. I bring it back every year on this date to kick off the Advent season. After all, we await the arrival of the Savior who says:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. (John 15:9)

But also tells us:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (Matthew 10:34)

As we do with the Lord he serves, we need to ask whether St. Nicholas is a lover, a fighter . . . or both?

Hang out your stockings!

St. Nicholas Delivers the Three Innocent Men, Ilya Repin, 1888

  Hang out your stockings: today, December 6th, is the feast day of St. Nicholas of Myra.  Over the last couple of centuries the modern Santa Claus has somehow developed from the figure of this 4th century bishop. The real Saint has retained a strong devotion in both the Eastern and Western churches.  

I say the “real Saint” with the proviso that he is another one of those Saints (like St. Valentine or St. Barbara) about whom we know little with historical certainty. As the biography at Catholic Online [here] tells us: “his episcopate at Myra during the fourth century is really all that seems indubitably authentic.”  Nonetheless, I think it’s reasonable to assume that what has come down to us has some basis, at least, in his life and in the way he conducted himself.

Generosity and Mercy

     The most familiar story about St. Nicholas in our time concerns his generosity.  He inherited great wealth from his parents. While still a young man, he decided to give his money to the poor.  He famously rescued three poverty-stricken young women from being sold into prostitution by secretly throwing bags of money through the windows into their home. This incident is the inspiration for the tradition of leaving gifts in shoes or stockings on St. Nicholas Day.  We also know him as an exemplar of mercy, which fits nicely with generosity (and with the image of Santa Claus).  

 ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

–Mark 12:30-31

The first millennium also highly valued a different St. Nicholas story. This one tells how he appeared in a dream to the Emperor Constantine. The dream-Nicholas was pleading on behalf of three men who had been imprisoned unjustly. After learning that the official who was holding the men had a similar dream, and that the men had been praying for Nicholas’s help, the emperor set them free.

Striking a Blow for the Truth

     Then there’s yet another old story about St. Nicholas. This one has recently enjoyed new popularity. Nicholas was attending the Council of Nicaea in 325. There, in a fit of anger, he slapped Arius, the founder of the Arian Heresy.  This story has an irresistible appeal for many Catholics involved in apologetics, particularly when cast as a humorous contrast to affable image of Santa Claus. The Saint’s slap is often upgraded in these accounts to a more manly punch.  

One can find numerous reproductions online, for instance, of ancient frescoes depicting the incident. These often have captions such as: “I came to give kids presents and punch heretics . . . and I just ran out of presents!”  I have to admit, I have chuckled at some of these myself.  At the same time, it would seem that smacking Arius, heresiarch though he was, falls a little short of the Christian Charity test. The council fathers thought so, at least. It seems that they “deprived [Nicholas] of his episcopal insignia and committed him to prison.”

Salvation From Sin

Naughty and Nice: St. Nicholas (R) in a theological discussion with Arius (L): Fresco in Soumela Monastery, Turkey

There is a happy ending for Nicholas, however. Jesus himself freed him from prison and restored him to his bishopric. We can take that as confirmation, I suppose, that despite his impulsiveness, Nicholas’s heart was in the right place. In any case, the incident illustrates another important aspect of the Saint: a man fiercely dedicated to preserving and defending the Truth.

     Now, there may seem to be an incongruity between the Jolly Old Saint Nick who comes to the aid of poor maidens and innocent prisoners on the one hand, and the righteous crusader who puts a whuppin’ on heretics on the other, but that’s not the case.  The salvation that Jesus lived, suffered and died to bring us is salvation from sin. This is not rescue from discomfort or physical hardships.  What could be more generous or merciful than rescuing a brother from sin, or even more so, preventing him from leading others into it?  

Lover and Fighter

Granted, we are called to do so with love (Ephesians 4:15). Given that, I wouldn’t recommend emulating St. Nicholas’s smackdown of Arius.  Nevertheless, St. Nicholas embodies an important truth. He shows us that Generosity and Mercy are not opposed to Justice and Truth. They are, indeed must be, different sides of the same coin, as Scripture attests:

Show us thy steadfast love, O LORD,
and grant us thy salvation.
Let me hear what God the LORD will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his saints, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.  (Psalm 85:7-11)

That’s not a bad thing to reflect on this week as we celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas, Bishop, Lover, and Fighter.

Featured image top of page: St. Nicholas Gives Alms, by Jan Jiri Heinsch, 1685

iacobusm Lent and Easter

Legions of Angels, the Adulteress, and Christ’s Sacrifice

                    Christ and the Adulterous Woman, by Nicholas Poussin, 1653

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 46: 53-54)

 Legions of Angels 

     Many Years ago I taught in a (more or less) Catholic high school. One day a certain student wanted to know how many soldiers were in a Roman legion. Around 6,000, I answered.  “Well,” he offered, “Jesus said that if he asked, his Father would send him twelve legions of angels.”  I acknowledged that he had (see Matthew, 26:53).  The student’s face then broke into a huge grin as he blurted out, “That’s a whole lot of angels!”

     I wasn’t sure at the time, and I’m unsure still more than two decades later, what my student was getting at.  Was he making a joke of some sort?  Did he really admire Christ’s power to command the hosts of Heaven? I do know that Jesus was serious. His point wasn’t the exact number of angels he could summon.  Now, I’m sure that the number twelve is meant to correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles, etc., but that’s secondary. Christ’s immediate point was that he had all the power he could want.  He had the power to save Himself . . . if he chose.

 

 How Then Should The Scriptures Be Fulfilled ?

The Arrest of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, studio of Giuseppe Cesari, c.1600

     It will be helpful to look at the context for the comment about legions of angels.  Jesus’ affirmation of his authority over angelic armies comes during Matthew’s Passion Narrative.  He is in the Garden of Gethsemane with his Apostles. At that moment Judas arrives, “and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people” (Matthew 26:47). Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss,

 

Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 46: 50-54)

 

     Jesus surrenders willingly to the violent mob, not because he can’t free himself, but because he chooses to surrender. He allows the crowd to take him, knowing that it means an agonizing death by crucifixion.

 

 The Passiontide 

     This is a good time to talk about the Passion of Jesus, by the way, because we are now in that part of the Liturgical Year that we call the Passiontide. This is the last two weeks of Lent, when we focus our Lenten observance more explicitly on the suffering and death of Jesus.  The transition to Passiontide, unfortunately, is no longer as obvious as it was when we called the Fifth Sunday Passion Sunday. The TLM still follows the the traditional practice; in the ordinary form, however, Passion Sunday has now moved one week later to combine with Palm Sunday.

     While it may not be as obvious as in the traditional arrangement, the liturgy is still pointing us more directly in the direction of events of the Triduum. Consider the Gospel reading for this past Sunday, the Woman Caught in Adultery from John’s Gospel (John 8:1-11).  As in the Passion narrative we have a violent mob, eager for blood. The difference is, here Jesus does frustrate the crowd’s murderous designs, and he does it without so much as a single cohort of angels.

   

 The Guilty And The Innocent 

King of Sorrows, by William Burton Shakespeare, 1897

     That’s not the only difference between the two passages.  Isn’t it interesting that the woman Jesus saves really is guilty: she was caught in the act.  Jesus himself, on the other hand, is totally without sin, and yet he allows himself to be taken.  In fact, it is because of her sin (and mine, and yours) that Jesus surrenders his own life.

     That doesn’t make sense, without the eyes of faith.  But of course, “the wisdom of this world is folly with God” (1 Corinthians 3:19). And in fact, that surrender of his own innocent life is an act of power greater than anything the “wisdom” of this world can imagine.  All the legions of angels together can’t match its power.  For the sake of sinners such as the adulteress (and me, and you), Jesus Christ conquered Death.

     Yes, Christ has freed us from death.  The freedom he purchased for us by his own free choice, however, has a purpose.   After he tells the woman, “Nor do I condemn you” Jesus adds, “Go and sin no more.”  Our liberty in Christ isn’t license.  He didn’t suffer and die on the cross in order to enable us to continue our lives of sin.  He gave us freedom so that we, too, might freely choose the good. It’s an awesome gift, and an awesome responsibility.

     This coming Sunday we will celebrate Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday.  Over the week that follows we will relive the events of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Let’s remember that, if he chooses, Jesus can ask his Father for twelve legions of angels.  Instead, Jesus chooses to suffer and die: not because he’s guilty, but because we are.

 

 

iacobusm Uncategorized

Evangelism, Free Will, and the Spiritual Works of Mercy

St. Paul in the Areopagus by Mariano Fortuny (1855-1856)

   We live in strange times.  Never in human history has it been possible for so many people to live lives so disconnected from reality. Former Nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Vigano has just released a remarkable meditation for Lent which touches on that issue.  He starts with a prayer from the Ambrosian Missal, which says in part:

Venite flentes, fundamus lacrymas ad Deum:
quia nos negleximus, et propter nos terra patitur:
nos iniquitatem fecimus,
et propter nos fundamenta commota sunt.
Festinemus anteire ante iram Dei . . .

Come weeping, let us shed tears to God: because we have transgressed, and because of us the earth suffers: we have committed iniquity and because of us its foundations have been shaken. Let us hasten to prevent God’s wrath . . .

Archbishop Vigano (ncronline.com photo)

“It is difficult for a man of today,” Archbishop Vigano remarks, “to understand these words of the Ambrosian Missal.” The idea that we owe any obedience to anything outside of our own will and desires has become foreign to us. The understanding that justice demands that we submit ourselves to God’s judgment is particularly difficult:

     The de-Christianized world and the secularized mentality that has infected even Catholics does not accept the idea of a God offended by the sins of men, and Who punishes them with scourges so that they repent and ask for forgiveness.

     We can see the mentality that Archbishop Vigano is describing everywhere today, even, as he says, in the Church. Not only is it a problem everywhere, it is a problem that undermines everything.  When we reject the truth of our relationship with God, we undermine the very concept of truth itself.  As St. Paul tells the Ephesians:

Now this I affirm and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart;  they have become callous and have given themselves up to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of uncleanness. (Ephesians 4:17-29)

     This “darkening of the understanding” makes it very difficult to carry on any sort of reasoned discussion on matters of importance.  When all that matters are feelings and desires, when disgreement (at least, disagreement with favored positions or practices) is ipso facto “hate,” real dialogue is impossible.

      This curious state of affairs complicates the efforts at evangelization in various ways. For instance, a few years ago when I was the moderator of an online community a young non-Catholic Christian suggested that sharing the Gospel with other people and praying for them was impeding their free will.  Now, it would never have occurred to me that informing or attempting to persuade somebody, much less praying for them, somehow interfered with their ability to make free choices; on the contrary, without free will, such efforts are pointless. Nonetheless, I had heard similar questions from other young people as well. Most young people today (and many older ones as well) have been formed in a popular culture that teaches that simply disagreeing with somebody can be a “microaggression”, particularly if the alleged microaggressor holds more traditional views, and most especially if those views can be traced back to orthodox Christian morality.  How should we respond to this situation?

     The first thing, I think, is to stress that evangelization and prayers for conversion are an act of mercy. How? Since we are all ultimately held accountable for the things that we do with our free will, we try to save others from the consequences of bad decisions, which is to say, sin. It is, of course, merciful to save another person from sin (and, potentially, from eternal damnation). More specifically, I think we can profitably look at this question in terms of several of the traditional Spiritual Works of Mercy.

     Let’s start with free will itself. Even though our will is free, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t influenced by many things.  Not only that, we can’t make good choices if we’re missing essential information.  Let us suppose, for instance, that a friend is about to dive into a lake that has just been declared unsafe due to high levels of harmful bacteria. Informing him of the danger doesn’t violate his free will; in fact, it allows him to make a truly free choice, because it’s based on the truth, and not on a false belief that the water is safe. If it’s merciful to protect a friend from getting sick in this way, how much more so if we can give him information that can save his soul for eternity? This is the 2nd Spiritual Work of Mercy, “Instructing the Ignorant” (“ignorant” isn’t meant as an insult; it simply means someone who doesn’t know).

7th Spiritual Work of Mercy: Praying for the Living and the Dead (CNS photo/Jim West)

   We sometimes have the right information, but we may also have disordered desires (that is, attraction to sin) that lead us to do things that we know are wrong. Disordered desires such as greed, lust, envy, etc., pull our will away from what we know is right. Consequently, it often happens that a Christian who knows full well that a particular act, adultery for instance, is seriously wrong, follows his or her desires instead.  The consequences can be disastrous for such a person and for others involved in his sin.  It is merciful to point out these abuses of our will to each other, because in doing so we can sometimes bring a sinner back to right conduct. As an added bonus, we help ourselves as well, as Holy Scripture tells us:

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)

This is the 3rd Spiritual Work of Mercy, “Admonishing Sinners” (and we are all sinners who sometimes require admonition).

    In the end, of course, none of us exercises our free will perfectly, and none of us can save ourselves: that’s why we needed Christ to die on the Cross for us.  For that reason we “Pray for the Living and the Dead” (the 7th Spiritual Work of Mercy). When we pray for the living, we are asking God not to override their free will, but to give them the Grace (His help and support) to freely use their will in accord with His Will, and not according to their disordered desires. We also pray for the dead in Purgatory who are being cleansed of the consequences of the misuse of their free will, that God’s mercy might ease their passage into His Presence.

     We hear a lot less about the Spiritual Works of Mercy these days than we do about the Corporal Works of Mercy (a reflection of materialist tendencies affecting even the Church).  That’s a shame, because in the midst of the greatest material prosperity that this world has ever seen we have a vast sea of spiritual suffering. The world is full of people, including me and you, whose choices are hampered by ignorance, whose desires are disordered, and who are desperately in need of prayers. Answering their needs isn’t an imposition: it’s an act of mercy.

iacobusm Faith and Sin, Lent and Easter, Sacred scripture

Confession, Jonah, and the Prodigal’s Sons

    There are many things for which I should be more grateful, and one of the greatest is the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Confession. One of the graces of the season of Lent is that there are many things to remind my stubborn, sluggish brain of that fact.  For instance, this past Sunday father dedicated a large part of his homily to explaining how a detailed examination of conscience can help us make a good confession, and illustrated with a model based on the Ten Commandments .  He also very helpfully directed our attention to the stained glass window closest to the confessional, which happened to be a depiction of the Prodigal Son. That reminded me of a Lenten penance I received at confession a few years ago, an assignment which got me thinking . . . and led to the meditation on the Prodigal Son, the Book of Jonah, and the Power of Forgiveness that I have reposted below.

     I was given an interesting penance when I went to confession recently. I was to meditate on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).  My confessor emphasized that the father in Jesus’ story, who extravagantly welcomes back his wastrel son, is the true “prodigal”.  In the context of the Sacrament of Confession we can see a clear identification between this father and the loving and forgiving God, with ourselves as the erring son who, having wasted his father’s generosity, returns home chastened and knowing that any  kindness he receives will be more than he deserves. “Father”, he says, “I have sinned against Heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:18).

“The Return of the Prodigal Son” (1782) by Jean Germain Drouais (angry son at right)

     There is another son in the story, however, the “Good” Son, who remained faithfully at home and, as he tells his father, “ ‘Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command” (Luke 15:29).  Angry that his erring brother is receiving a huge “welcome back” party, while his father “never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Luke 15:29), the obedient son stubbornly refuses to come in and join the celebration.  He is, in fact, still obstinately standing outside the house at the end of Jesus’ parable, and the last thing we see is his father pleading with him “to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).

     Thinking about this second son, I was reminded of the story of Jonah.  I had never before considered how closely Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son parallels the last two chapters of the book of Jonah, but the comparison is striking.  In the Old Testament book Jonah is sent to warn the people of Nineveh to repent their sins, or face the wrath of God. The Ninevites listen to the words of the prophet: like the Prodigal Son himself, they whole-heartedly repent, and in turn receive God’s whole-hearted forgiveness.  Who could object to that?  As it turns out, Jonah could, and does, object:

 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil.  Therefore now, O LORD, take my life from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:1-3).

“Jonah, Seated Under the Gourd, Contemplates the City” (1566) by Maerten van Heemskerck

Jonah is determined not to give up his anger.  God tries to soften his heart, first with kindness, by growing a large plant to shield him from the sun. He then takes a harsher approach, in which he kills the plant and exposes the sulking prophet to the ravages of sun and wind.  Jonah’s heart is unchanged: “I do well to be angry,” he says, “ angry enough to die” (Jonah 4:9).  The story ends, as does Jesus’ parable, with the voice of the Father explaining to his still fuming son why it is better to show compassion for those who were lost in sin, but have found their way back:

“You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night.  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:10-11)

In both places, it is left unsaid whether the Father’s kindly words eventually pierce the heart of his stubborn son. We leave both Jonah and the unforgiving son still brimming with anger and resentment.

     Which brings us back to Luke’s Gospel. The parable of the Prodigal Son is the culmination of a series of parables illustrating that, as Jesus says, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).  He is addressing a group of  Scribes and Pharisees who were grumbling about Jesus, saying “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).  The angry son in the parable is obviously intended to represent Christ’s hard-hearted critics.  

     Scripture, of course, always works on numerous levels, and we can see other meanings in the unforgiving brother as well.  As I meditated on this passage I could see myself in this unlovely figure; as much as I can identify with the erring but repentant son, I can also be the judging, unyielding son who refuses to share his Father’s joy in the redemption of those who had previously fallen. Sometimes, amazingly, I can be both at once.

      In his way, the angry son is the worse sinner.  There can be no doubt that the first son has indulged in serious and destructive wrongdoing, but because it’s so obvious, and the consequences so inescapable, he knows he needs to repent.  The second son appears to be doing all the right things, and in fact he is . . . on the outside.  He is really like (again) the scribes and pharisees, whom Jesus says “are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27).  The appearance of probity keeps him from seeing his own sinful heart, and he willingly removes himself from his father’s house.  Jesus makes the same point with a different parable in Matthew’s Gospel:

A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” (Matthew 21:28-31)

     This is, I think, a good point to consider as we draw nearer to Holy Week.  It may be that the inspired author of Jonah, and Jesus himself with his parable, finish with a open-ended question, because we, in the person of the (self)righteous son, are being invited to give up our stubbornness and embrace the Father’s compassion. All of us need to throw ourselves on the mercy of God, Who in his prodigal love for us gave His only Son to suffer and die for our sins.  What are our little resentments compared to that?

An earlier version of this Throwback Post was first published 21 March 2016.