St. Nicholas
One
Martin Luther is said to be the first to hang candles on the Christmas tree as a sign for the star of Bethlehem. He also wished to get rid of all of the representations of St. Nicholas and his relationship with Christmas. Being opposed to the veneration of saints, He promoted the image of Jesus as a child bringing everyone presents. The tradition of a lighted tree stuck, but not that of Jesus as a child coming into our homes. St. Nicholas, the gift giver and wonder worker, was not a figure with which one could easily dispense.
We’ve all seen the many shows and movies on the true meaning of Christmas. The good ones all point back to the celebration of Jesus, and the veneration of His incarnation. While this is all of course true, why didn’t the the image of the Child Jesus bringing us gifts catch on? Wouldn’t that have been more appropriate?
Jesus’ mission teaches us this: He has created a world where he prefers to give gifts with and through others. He gives life through parents, nourishment through food, heat through fire, laughter through friends, and the greatest gift of all, himself, he gives through priests and bishops. St. Nicholas does not need to be replaced by Christ because he is already animated by the love of Christ for others, is configured to Christ via baptism and ordination. The imitation of Christ is an essential ingredient to Christmas.
Two
On this feast of St. Nicholas, we’re reminded of his role as the holy bishop of modern day Myra, Turkey. He lived during the last days of the roman persecutions, and worked tirelessly to protect the poor from hardship and heresy. It has been said, “as smoke rises from a great fire, so do stories rise from the life of a great man.” Just so for Nicholas.
Perhaps the most famous story from St. Nicholas’s life concerns his helping a very poor family avoid selling their children to pay their debts. Wishing to remain anonymous, Nicholas left coins in their shoes. Upon waking, the family rejoiced and used the money to pay the dowries for their daughters to be married. On hearing this, St. Nicholas returned with more money to pay for the wedding parties.
Nicholas teaches us that the best form of generosity is found in forgetting one-self as a gift to the other. Of course, it is not wrong to receive thanks for gifts. But the figure of Nicholas illuminates this paradox: the more we take our ego out of our efforts to give to others, the better our giving becomes. And further, he teaches that the greatest gift of all is not a material thing, but to lovingly pay attention to others: whether Divine or human.
Is this not the greatest gift, to lovingly pay attention and be attended to? To whom can I give this gift today?
Three
There are cynics and skeptics who say of Christmas that Christians simply adopted pagan superstitions and celebrations and added Christ. Christmas, they say, was originally a festival of the winter solstice. But this is silly and ignores the testimony of history, and I don’t want to go to a Christmas party of someone who thinks like this.
Christmas is a time of parties, gift giving, cheer, and family NOT because we are all sheep who thoughtlessly continue silly traditions handed to us, but because even in such a cynical world, we all hunger for joy, peace, and hope, and for those who dare discern, we know that these things actually exist in Jesus! What a great sign that when the world is literally the darkest and deadest, when all our instincts to survive should tell us to store up goods for ourselves, the birth of Christ leads us instead to give of our poverty and rejoice.
Advent, then, is a time of preparation—preparation of our hearts to receive Christ, or in other words, purification of our attention so we can be attentive to him. Advent is a somber, serious time in the Church because we spend this time realizing how many worthless things we pay attention to and to cut them out of our lives.
If I am always distracted, I can never give good gifts. What distracts me from giving attention to God and others?
Four
Christmas is not about gifts; it is about attention. To give someone your attention is to give them the gift your love. During Christmas we fix our attention on the fact that God did not abandon his people. He remembered his promise to our fathers, and came to save us as one of us. This is why the Child Jesus is such a marvel and wonder. God loves us so much that he traveled all the way from heaven. He wants us to know he sees our misfortunes. He came into them and he experienced them with us so we will never be alone. And all he wants in return is our love, our attention.
This is all that prayer is, attention to God.
"Prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy."
- St. Therese of Lisieux
Jesus, in this decade, help me to pay attention to you.
Five
To give someone your attention is to give them your love. We are transformed by who and what we pay attention to. I’m sure you have experienced this yourself. We take on habits and speech patterns of our friends and family. But not only these things, we take on characteristics, likes and dislikes, our very personality is formed by those we spend our time with, those we pay attention to. But this effect does not always work for the better. If we pay attention to the wrong things, or lesser things instead of the most important things, we are improperly formed. This is what we call sin and vice.
St. Nicholas did not begin working miracles and saving families. He began being a saint by paying attention to God is his sacramental life, priesthood, and interior life. It was by the attention he gave to God, which God accepted and perfected, that he was able to then care for the needs of others and work wonders in God’s name.
A good resolution for the next 24 hours: take inventory of all the things to which I pay attention. How does my attention need to be purified, and how can I pay more and better attention to the things in life I worth loving (God, family, friends, truth, etc.)