Just Who Is St. Nicholas?
On Saturday December 4th our parish will be hosting a
Breakfast With St. Nicholas in the parish hall. Formerly, this same gathering of children was known as Breakfast With Santa, but in our planning this year I felt it more appropriate to emphasize a saint of the Church who is associated by the Church with the true spirit of Christmas. Santa, that jolly, happy man who gives toys to children on December 24th the world over, only seeks to draw our attention to Christmas by the great work that he does on Christmas Eve. Before that time he asks children to be good and to avoid being ‘naughty’. Santa has often been exploited by those who want to make money on his good and generous reputation. Santa was made popular by Coca Cola years ago as they showed him consuming their product while leaving presents in children’s homes instead of drinking the more traditional milk and eating cookies.
The Church reminds us that Advent is about waiting whereas the commercial side of Christmas, which Santa never intended, wants to make us think about Christmas months before it takes place. It is not and should not be viewed as Santa verses St. Nicholas – they are the same man and person. In our celebration on December 4th we will focus on St. Nicholas as the Bishop of Myra.
Bishop Nicholas lived in the 4th Century, and therefore, it is apparent to see how challenging it would be to have an accurate historical picture of a man who lived almost 1700 years ago. Even the exact year of his death is presented as 345 and 352.
Legends about St. Nicholas grew into the story and legend of Santa Claus, but really they are one and the same person. Nicholas was a Catholic Christian born in the village of Patara in what is now the southern coast of Turkey. According to the legends about Nicholas, his parents were wealthy but both his parents died when he was young, leaving Nicholas with the family fortune, which he gave away to assist the needy and those who were sick and suffering. He later dedicated his life to serving God and became known throughout the land for his love for children and those in need. He has been considered as the Patron Saint of Children.
Even if much of what we know about St. Nicholas has been fashioned from story to fill in the gaps of what we don’t really know about him historically, the figure of this man who became a bishop of the Church has endured the ages and his popularity has grown in many countries all over the world. His life points powerfully to Jesus Christ and the selflessness Jesus calls us all to live.
Children grow up learning about Santa. What the legend of St. Nicholas and Santa presents to us who believe in Jesus is about the power of giving rather than receiving. Jesus gave so much to so many – in fact to all people – and ultimately gave His life for us. He gives us a share in His life and promises us that we will share in the fullness of the life that is to come and will last forever. Both St. Nicholas and Santa love Jesus and would only desire that people would love him too.
They lived their lives in imitation of the Saviour.
In 1822, one of the most enduring and endearing poems was written by Clement Clarke Moore. It is known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas” but was originally known as “A Visit From St. Nicholas”. Three times, in this popular and well known rhyme associated with Christmas, is the name St. Nicholas used and once his nick name “St. Nick” is cited. The poem never mentions Santa once because, for the author, St. Nicholas and the work Santa does are the same.
Part of the legend of St. Nicholas holds the story about one family who were about to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on three separate occasions, bags of gold were tossed through an open window into their house and were said to have landed into stockings or shoes left by the fireplace to dry. This led to the practice of children hanging stockings by the fireplace to be filled at Christmas.
Over the generations the things found in Christmas stockings varied greatly. In more humbler times children might find an orange and a dime or quarter in their stocking, but to them it was a great and treasured gift, while today the items might be different and more expensive.
Someone once said that “the only things you get to keep are the things you give away”, and I believe this to be not only true but a central message of Christian faith. We discover true happiness when we forget ourselves and do some thing, small or greater, for someone else. If Christmas for children is only about getting things without regard for others then both St. Nicholas and Santa would be so disappointed.
Happy Advent! (Fr. Charles)
A NEW MUSIC DIRECTOR
I am pleased to announce that our parish has acquired a new Music Director for the 11:00 a.m. Sunday morning Mass. Dave Fernihough and his wife, Janice both recently retired their positions as organist/director/cantor after faithfully serving our parish for fourteen years. We are grateful to them for their dedication and gifts shared these many years and recognize their devotion to the liturgy of the Church.
Our new Music Director is Mr. Bill Targett who brings with him tremendous experience, ability and a love for liturgical music. He is both an organist and choir director and we both welcome both he and his wife Kay as we anticipate Bill’s worthy contribution to the celebration of Mass and all things liturgical. Welcome Bill! (Fr. Charles)
FINDING FAITH ON THE EARTH
(Continued from last week – Part III of a 3-part series)
FINDING FAITH ON THE EARTH
PART III
In the previous two weeks I have written in the bulletin about our need to read the signs of the times, taking stock of the world situation and how things in both nature and in humanity seem to be falling apart. While I wouldn’t want to sound like Henny Penny claiming hysterically that the sky is falling, one cannot but help take interested note that we are in trouble as a planet and a people with nature out of whack and the moral decline of us human beings who have been put “in charge of all creation”. (Hebrews 2:8) As stewards of the earth our modern times have not faired well with the things entrusted to us.
WHAT ARE WE TO DO?
As with anything, it is very easy to be critical and to point out the errors, pitfalls and troubles around us, but the message of the Gospels – the message of Christ – is clear as to what we should be doing and must be doing. As individuals we must do our part to take care of the planet in small and larger ways, wherever possible. I spoke with a woman a few summers ago when I was still living in Barrie. When out for walks with my dogs I often saw her walking down Baldwin Lane, which was the street our church was on. I noticed her because every once in a while she would swerve off of the sidewalk to pick up a pop can or a soft drink cup, or fast food take out box. She would stuff the discarded items in a bag and resume her walk. I was walking Bear and Jigs the first time I spoke to her, and thought her sudden movement from the sidewalk to the curb was out of fear for my dogs. I called out, “It’s okay, they’re friendly.”, but she smiled and responded, “Oh, I’m not afraid of your dogs, I’m just picking up garbage and litter.” She shared with me that every time she went out for a walk she noticed just how much garbage people throw out of their moving cars or was just dropped by pedestrians, left to lie on the ground until someone else picked it up. I joked with her, sharing my theory that the litter and grafitti culprits are, in my view, roving groups of seniors who can get away with their mischief and carelessness because no one would possibly suspect them. She is certainly doing what she can and perhaps even more on her part to take care of the environment that is immediately around her.
But it makes me think about the reality that our present generation of young people have been raised with a far keener sense of how we need to take care of the environment, to avoid litter, and take care of the planet, but my memory serves me in knowing that literally I have not seen so much litter and garbage lying around as in the last couple of years. And it’s the little things that point us to the bigger things. A generation that grows up thinking that someone else will clean up their mess is the same generation that will corporately do the same thing on a global scale when they start running things.
The same can be said of things on a moral plain. The informed opinions we hold and the ways in which we either neglect to inform our consciences can lead to moral decay.
In 2008, the local Catholic School Board adopted a Catholic Values emphasis to stand as the Board’s focus for the coming year. They listed nine values that are important to our Faith: faith, hope, love, compassion, service, forgiveness, justice, truth and family. It was a vision that hoped to realize and return to the principle values that sustain us and form our Catholic Faith, and was certainly a good start in trying to live out what distinguishes us as Catholics who value the opportunities and benefits that Catholic Education has always stood for. More and more, and within our Catholic school system, the pull of the world to become secular gains in power and strength with each new day. And while I applauded the school board’s initiative, I would have added that there are no Catholic values without Catholic Faith – and Catholic Faith that is centered on the Eucharist and the sacramental life of the Church. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once stated that every five hundred years in the Church and in the world, we go through a major shift. In the first 500 years of the Church’s history, the questions surrounded Christ; how many persons, intellects and wills. In this period the Church dealt with many heresies that had arisen as the Church was growing and spreading throughout more of the known world. In the second 500 years, he said that the crisis was over the head of the Church – the pope. The third 500 year period dealt with the body of the Church which resulted in the Protestant Reformation, when those who opposed the Church and the way the Church was living, left the Catholic Church and founded a new Christian Church which, history has shown, has continued to break off one from another to the present day. Sheen said that at the end of the second millennium the crisis we are now facing is the way that we as the Church answers the question of Christ, “Will you become secular – will you leave me?” I believe that Fulton Sheen was prophetic in his words for clearly we can see how our values as a society which were (in former times) built upon Christian values have been eroded to individual values but not values that are held in common. Common decency, common courtesy, even common sense is no longer common in civilized society and we have resurrected in so many ways the “me generation” that seeks to look out only for the good of self and not so much of others. I think that parents who are truly trying to raise their children with a respect for God and love of Him and others, and who strive to pass on to their children the importance of decency, respect, selflessness and love of others are growing more and more concerned for their children who are affronted by the coarseness and lack of compassion and love within society.
To the question, what are we to do?, I would respond, cling to Jesus. Pray for the Holy Spirit’s power to be manifest in your life, your work, your family life and your prayer, that you would more and more meet the challenges this life and this world presents with fresh love and an inner sense of God’s abiding peace. The peace that Jesus gives is not the absence of war, but is a veritable peace that can and is to be ours in the midst of war and strife and stress. For two millennia the Church has known what it is to fight for what is right and good and wholesome in her members, her saints and martyrs and even to this present age. We can do our best with what we ask God for and God will equip us for another day. Let us in every time and season resolve to resist the temptation to accommodate ourselves with the temperature of the world and align ourselves with Christ, who never changes, but does by grace and openness change us. (Fr. Charles)
FINDING FAITH ON THE EARTH
(Continued from last week…)
In a time of global unrest and in an era that has developed an aversion to the traditional and the authentically sacred, people are seeking solace in all kinds of ways and in all manner of places. New churches that display the name “Christian” are born with the rising of the sun each day, and the same sun sets on them as one by one they die off, since they have no foundation apart from a self-appointed human leader no matter how sincere they might be. Cafeteria Christianity is rampant as seekers go from church to church, religion to religion, looking for a comfortable pew, like children going from one door to the next on Halloween night. And though Catholic Education is a precious gift with inestimable possibilities we should never take for granted, we are doing just that – taking it for granted. One day, in this province, we may find ourselves without a Catholic education system as we are left standing in the road as parishes, parents and educators, wondering what happened, while the current writing on the wall is telling us what is happening right now.
This is the time, as in all ages before us, when we so desperately need the prophet’s voice to call us back to our senses and return us to what is good, upright and holy. We need that voice which both comforts and convicts us and disrupts our sleeping stupor to shock and awaken us back to Christ again. We are suffering from the poison of sin and darkness and death while ignoring the antidote that is before us and with us – Christ Jesus. Yet not just any “christ” who is plaster-cast and unable to save. No, it is the same Christ who called people to Himself twenty centuries before as He walked the earth, (and not really all that much of it), and is the same One who revealed Himself as the Bread of Life. The antidote is Baptism, the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The cure for the world’s ills is not yet another argument about truth and who is right, but the One who is the Truth itself made incarnate as the Son of God who, when we are authentically united to Him, reveals to our hearts and consciences what is right and gives us the needed strength to do it.
In Luke 18:8, Jesus asks the question – “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This is not a question that Jesus posed to the ungodly, but was a probing question that leads to a demand for an authentic faith among those people of His time who were God-fearing disciples and religious people. Following two millennia we could think that we can rest easy if we thought of ourselves as ‘insiders’ on the news and the truth of the Kingdom of God, but we would be deceiving ourselves, for rest is for those who have died and will enjoy it forever once their mission and work on earth is done. The Christian heart and soul, of which St. Augustine referred, is meant to be rest-less, for we have much work to do in ourselves and in influencing others in the Good News until the Kingdom of God is fully realized. Faith on the earth, despite 2000 years of world and Church history, will not be found in abundance upon the Lord’s return, otherwise, why would the Lord have asked the question? The tendency for people of faith to believe either that all is well or all is going to hell are both extreme and wrong. This question is meant to and must stir up within us a desire to share our faith with others and not be satisfied in keeping it to ourselves, assuming that we have what we profess. As an ending question posed by Jesus after his story of the widow and the unjust judge, it demands that we be a people not only of good actions but also a people of prayer who daily, always, stay in communication with our heavenly Father, who sent us Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We are playing with real fire! (Fr. Charles)