Today is one of my favorite Feast Days for one of my favorite saints: Saint Nicholas, Bishop, Patron Saint of Sailors, and Gift-giver.

It is ironic that little is known about the life of Saint Nicholas, this Bishop of a seaport town in what is now Turkey, because he’s one of the most beloved and recognizable saints in popular culture. We know that he was born in the 4th Century, and that he attended the Council of Nicaea where he is purported to have socked Arius (considered a heretic at the time) right in the face. Anyone who has served on a church council understands that it can get a bit testy sometimes…

But other than the above (and the whole “punched Arius” thing may not even be accurate), all else that is said about St. Nicholas is lore and legend.

It is said of him that, as an infant, he refused to nurse on Wednesdays and Fridays, typically fasting days for the pious.

It is said that he aided a poor family once by paying the dowry of three daughters, saving them from a life of prostitution. On three successive nights he threw bags of coins through an open window. This act is how he became known as the patron saint of gift-giving.

It is said that he saved three boys who had been kidnapped by a butcher and returned them to their parents.

It is said that he aided sailors in trouble off the coast of Myra by calming a storm, and showed great courage himself while out on the sea. This is why he is the patron saint of seafarers.

Today around the world Saint Nicholas will be impersonated by many utilizing a long, white beard, parading around in Bishop vestments. In some places small children dress up like the saint to beg for alms for the poor.

In America the rituals of St. Nicholas Day have almost all been moved to December 25th and melded with other Christian-Solstice practices. Still, in some homes (like mine), children leave their shoes out by the fireplace or in the foyer of the home, hoping that St. Nicholas will come by on his horse and leave chocolate coins, oranges, and small trinkets as gifts. The coins are an homage to the legend of the dowries.

The festivities and legends surrounding Saint Nicholas have melded with Norse and Celtic winter legends and lore in these days. Looking more like Odin now than a short, brown-skinned Bishop (which he most certainly was), common depictions of Santa Claus bear little resemblance to this ancient priest from Asia Minor. Still, the practice of gift-giving and charity is certainly worth continuing in whatever form it takes, and in that way St. Nicholas is kept alive age after age in one form or another.

Saint Nicholas is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that charity and love are languages that are universal and, in the form of Saint Nick, take on hands, feet, and a face every year. There is much to be learned about human nature and human connection from the fact that his appeal is so wide and varied!

It almost makes one hopeful, yes?

-historical notes gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations and too many Rick Steves documentaries on Christmas

On December 5th the church honors an interesting Saint who sought to incorporate some pagan practices into the Christian faith and life (and, for that alone, he has my admiration): St. Clement of Alexandria, Priest and Scholar.

St. Clement of Alexandria (not to be confused with the Clement of Rome or any of the other many Clements of the ancient world) was a Greek philosopher born in the middle of the Second Century. He found himself making a home in Alexandria, the center of scholarship in the ancient world, and he headed up a school there that would eventually teach catechumenates about the faith.

St. Clement is noteworthy because he was a seeker of truth, and though a professed Christian he honored the truths and practices that other religious paths offered. He defended the faith in the midst of both his pagan friends and his Christian friends, trusting that melding certain practices was not only necessary, but good and human.

He believed that many of the ancient texts the church was using were wonderfully allegorical and applicable to life, and in this way he expanded the reach of the church in philosophical circles. Origen, the greatest biblical scholar of the early church, was his pupil.

His writings are some of the first systematics documents for the church.

St. Clement is a reminder for me, and should be for the church, that “purity” is a fiction we cannot afford in the world when it comes to practices, dogmas, and doctrines. It is appropriate that we honor St. Clement of Alexandria in the Advent-Christmas season because this time of year, in particular, is a beautiful bouquet of melded practices for humanity.

We need not run from this truth or try in vain to defend that it is not so. We must embrace it, revel in its particular beauties, and be at peace.

In the breaking days of December the church honors a Saint who found himself in a church at a breaking point: St. John of Damascus, Hymnwriter and Priest.

Born in 675, St. John was born into a wealthy family and was elevated to a political position of prominence at quite a young age when he succeeded his father as an official in the Court of the Caliph of Damascus.

He felt a call to the faith, and became a monk at the monastery of Mar Saba (still in existence!), a hermit colony founded in the year 484. It was there that he gave up his position in the Caliphate Court and devoted himself to simplicity, the study of the Desert Mothers and Fathers, and the priesthood. He was ordained in 725.

It was about this time that the church began to crumble under the weight of melding practices. The Eastern and Western churches were evolving drastically different approaches to faith and life. It would take another 300 years for the split to become official, but it is here in history that we can see the fault lines.

In these days the Byzantine emperor Leo III forbade the veneration of sacred images and icons, and ordered their destruction. St. John of Damascus wrote vehemently that icons and sacred images were portals and glimpses of the Divine, not Divine themselves, and should be saved and maintained. As part of his logic, he successfully defended the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist as well, against those who would dismiss it.

St. John of Damascus wrote great mystical treatises on theology, too, that are still foundational for the Orthodox community.

For all of the above, St. John of Damascus is considered by the Eastern Church as the last of its Fathers.

We still sing the writings of St. John, by the way. That wonderful Easter hymn sung every year that goes, “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness!” came from his golden pen. He authored a number of Easter hymns that still sing out the faith to this day every Spring.

St. John of Damascus died near Jerusalem around 760. He is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that icons and objects can be glimpses of Divine presence in this world, and we need not take everything at face value.

Indeed, nothing is “face value” when it comes to the Divine. God is always more than they appear…and godly things can be, too.

-historical notes from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

Today the church remembers the Martyrs of El Salvador.

Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel were Catholic Missionaries, Ursuline, and Maryknoll Sisters murdered in 1980 for their outspoken defense of the plight of the powerless and poor. Accompanying the people there, they were irritating the powers of the day with their theology of liberation and hope.

These four sisters were murdered on this day in the same year that Archbishop Romero was murdered, though he was killed in March.

Instead of recounting the details of their lives, I’ll just share a bit from a letter Sister Clarke wrote to her companion, Katie, just before she was murdered:

“There are so many deaths everywhere that it is incredible.

The ‘death squadron’ strikes in so many poor homes. A family of seven, including three small children, was machine-gunned to death in a nearby town just last week. It is a daily thing–bodies everywhere, many decomposing or attacked by animals because no one can touch them until they are seen by a coroner. It is an atmosphere of death.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring…Write to me soon. Know that I love you and pray for you daily. Keep us in your heart and prayers, especially the poor forsaken people.”

The days surrounding Christmas are filled with Feast Days, some beautiful (like St. Nicholas), and some tragic like today. This is because the Divine entered into the world not as we would like it to be, but as it is: beautiful and tragic.

These martyrs today are a reminder to me, and should be for the church, that the first victims of any sort of violence are the poor and vulnerable.

If you need confirmation of that, just ask any medical professional who they treated most for COVID-19.

Those with means, good insurance, fewer health conditions (that are easily and often exacerbated by poverty!), and who can take off work to get treatment without fear of losing their job largely recovered.

Those without, did not.

It is a different kind of violence, a more negligent kind on the part of the powers of the world, but it is violence none-the-less.

Let those with ears to hear, hear.

As we enter into December, the church remembers one I call the “Patron Saint of Mid-Life Crisis,” St. Nicholas Ferrar, 17th Century Deacon and Community Builder.

Nicholas was born in London in 1593 and educated at the prestigious Clare Hall in Cambridge. He would eventually become a Cambridge Fellow and, after traveling the European continent for a while, became a member of Parliament and a trustee in the Virginia Company. His political and financial stars shown brightly!

And then he decided it wasn’t the life he wanted to lead.

In 1625 he gave it all up and settled at a small house at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire. He was soon ordained a Deacon and founded an Anglican community which was basically comprised of his immediate family and the families of his in-laws.

From 1626 to 1646 they restored a dilapidated church, held Masses for the community, established a school to teach the local children, and took on the task of caring for the health-care needs of the neighborhood.

They held weekly vespers and daily prayer, and he invited his community to practice intentional fasting, meditation, and spiritual story-telling and writing, composing a number of books illustrating the Christian life.

This little community was visited by English authorities and nobility and used as a place of prayer, blessing, and restoration.

St. Ferrar died in 1637 and the community was eventually destroyed by the Puritans who called it a “Protestant nunnery.” Most of the stories and books composed there were burned, and the chapel was once again put to ruin (though it was rebuilt in the 1800’s).

You might recognize “Little Gidding” as the title of the last of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” one of the great religious poems of the Twentieth Century.

St. Ferrar is a reminder to me, and should be to everyone inside and outside the church, that it is absolutely Ok to stop doing things you are good at and seek a new path, no matter your stage in life.

The idea that everyone is called to do one thing, and one thing only, is a romantic fallacy. You can switch gears, by God.

-historical pieces from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

Today, November 30th, the church honors an often overshadowed apostle, Saint Andrew. He’s usually called “brother of Peter,” and rarely seen without that qualifier, making him, in essence, known to the world only in relation to his brother…which many people can probably identify with.

St. Andrew is the patron saint of sea-people, but also the informal saint of all who stand in the shadow of someone else.

He is the saint for the B-side of the record, the underdog sibling, the cobbler and the cooper who are no longer appreciated in their crafts.

Lore notes him dying in Greece, crucified because he refused to make sacrifice to the local gods and kept talking about Jesus.

And though he stood in the shadow of his brother his whole life, Andrew gets a place of prominence in the end: his feast day is the official marker for the start of Advent because the First Sunday of Advent every year is the Sunday that falls closest to St. Andrew’s day.

-icon written by Sister Nadine of the Sisters of St. Andrew in London, GB

Today, as we begin our Advent journey in 2022, the church honors Dorothy Day, Friend of the Poor and Antagonizer of the Privileged.

Born in Brooklyn just before the turn of the 20th Century, Dorothy worked for radical newspapers in her early years, mixing with the bohemian crowds of Greenwich Village.

She found herself living with a man she loved, and became pregnant in 1926. It was during this time that she experienced a life-changing conversion to the faith, and she made her home in Roman Catholicism.

She struggled to marry her internal passion for the Christ with her outer conviction to work for social justice. In 1933 she collaborated with fellow gadfly, Peter Maurin, to found the Catholic Worker Movement. Living simply and intentionally, this pseudo-monastic community took a vow to live collectively for the betterment of the poor and the outcast.

They set up hospitality houses in the city, collective living units in agricultural plots of land, and convened clarity councils to make decisions. They aimed to “create a new society within the shell of the old.”

St. Dorothy died in 1980. There is a story about her funeral that, as her casket was being carried through the street to the sanctuary for the funeral Mass, a person with severe mental illness pressed in on the crowd gathered around the procession. They made their way to the casket, and opened it, peering down upon Dorothy. The whole crowd stood and let it happen, knowing that it was precisely this human Dorothy had come to give her life to, and was ministering to them one more time.

St. Dorothy Day is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that simple living is a calling for some, but not all. Poverty should be a choice, by God, and not the result of unfair economic, social, or political circumstances. The church is called to lift those trapped in poverty and to invite those with much to embrace a simpler life for the sake of their neighbor.

-historical bits from Claiborne and Wilson-Hartgrove’s Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

-icon written by Dan Smith

Today the church honors the person who is largely considered the “creator of the English hymn”: St. Isaac Watts, Hymnwriter and Inspirer.

St. Isaac was the first-born of nine children whose father was a nonconformist minister who was twice jailed for “heretical ideas.” He was an excellent student, particularly astute at rhyming, and many pushed him toward the priesthood.

Isaac wasn’t interested in a clergy life, though, and after a few years in higher education, set his brain to writing. He was not happy with what he considered to be “poorly arranged psalms,” and attempted to do better for the church. It was during this time in his early twenties that the majority of what would be published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs was written.

At the age of twenty-four, Isaac began informally preaching and, though he had rejected the offer to enter the priesthood, found a home as an independent minister. He assumed the pulpit of an independent congregation in Mark Lane, Britain, and soon after he began to lead the congregation his health began to fail.

He was forced to live his last thirty-six years of life in the home of Sir Thomas Abney, preaching and teaching only occasionally.

Despite his illness, his fame, as well as theological, and philosophical writings flourished abroad. Having read parts of these books in my University years, I can attest to his brilliance. His work Logic and Speculations on the Human Nature of the Logos come to mind.

He fundamentally changed the course of hymnody as well. Horae Lyricae and Psalms of David, as well as the afore mentioned collection of hymns and songs, became (and continue to be!) staple pieces in the liturgy of the church.

He even made an appearance in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as his book of children’s songs was parodied in those pages.

But the reason you know St. Isaac the best is because you sing him every year when you shout loudly, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” He penned that now famous Advent/Christmas hymn and our Decembers have never been the same.

St. Isaac finally succumbed to his illness and suffering, and was buried on this date in 1748. He never married, and is still called the Melanchthon of his day (a high honor in Lutheran circles!) for his learning, gentleness, and devotion.

St. Isaac Watts is a reminder for me, and for the whole church, sometimes the most brilliant minds are found in what many would consider challenging bodies. Watts spent much of his life ill, but the fruits of his relentlessly engaged intellect remain quite healthy.

Today the church remembers a 20th Century Mexican priest, St. Miguel Agustin Pro, Martyr of the Faith.

St. Miguel was born in 1891 in Zacatecas, Mexico, and was known as a happy, cheerful, and privileged child. Despite his relatively high-born status, he developed a deep love and kinship for the working class families around him, and began to spend all of his time and energy working alongside the poor.

He eventually became a Jesuit novice at the age of twenty, and was exiled during the Mexican Revolution. He went to Belgium, where he was ordained, and eventually returned to Mexico in the wake of the war. He found churches closed, priests hiding, and being a Catholic now illegal. Fr. Miguel would regularly dress up in disguises to conduct secret and underground ministry, especially offering pastoral care, comfort, and the sacraments to the afflicted.

In 1927 St. Miguel was accused of being a part of a failed bombing attempt, though it is widely believed that the charges were false. He was handed over to the police and sentenced to death without so much as a trial.

As he was put in front of the firing squad he cried out, “Long live Christ the King!”

Though the government forbade a public funeral, people poured out of their homes to line the streets as his body passed by.

St. Miguel is a reminder to me, and should be for the whole church in the United States, that it was not so long ago that real religious persecution so close to home was a thing, so we should be very hesitant to claim it over baking cakes, serving pizza, and performing weddings and whatnot today.

-historical pieces from Pfatteicher’s _New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

-icon by Iknu Arts (https://displate.com/displate/2513912)

Today the church honors an apostolic pillar whose writings almost (and should have!) made it into the Biblical canon: St. Clement, Theologian and Bishop of Rome.

Little is known about the life of St. Clement, who was probably the fourth Bishop of Rome. He lived and died right around the year 100, and may be the same Clement written about in the book of Philippians (4:3). He was certainly the writer, though, of the Epistle of Clement I (though probably not the Epistle of Clement II).

Ordained by St. Peter, Clement was said to be banished to Crimea during the reign of Trajan, forced to work in the mines. It was there, it is said, that he was tied to an anchor and thrown into the Black Sea (the anchor is his saintly symbol).

But though so little is known about Clement, we certainly know much about his thoughts and his voice. In the year 96 Clement authored a letter from the Church at Rome to the Church at Corinth. This letter is the earliest Christian document we have in existence, with the exception of some New Testament writings, and was written to encourage the Church at Corinth to avoid a schism and remain steadfast to one another. It’s a letter of pastoral advice.

This letter was so widely known, and so widely revered, early manuscripts of the New Testament include it in the canon.

St. Clement is a reminder for you, and should be for the whole church, that not all that is holy is contained in the canon, Beloved.

-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations