6 December, Follow that star IV: do they still believe?

Here is Saint Nicholas, ‘of this church the patron’ according to the Latin inscription at the foot of the window. The saint is holding a model of ‘this church’, Saint Nicholas’ at Barfrestone near Dover in Kent, a tiny gem of the 11th or 12th Century.

Notice, too, his impressive beard, as good as any department store Santa, who of course is a distant descendant of the generous Saint Nicholas.

The three discs repeated on his mitre (or bishop’s headdress) and his cope (or robe) stand for gold coins which Nicholas tossed into the chimney of a home where three daughters were too poor to get married. The story of the boys in the tub tells that the saint restored them to life after a butcher had killed and pickled them.

These stories are not to be believed as historically factual but they show that Nicholas was a conscientious bishop and well aware of the needs of children and families, a fitting patron of children. But do we want children to believe in Father Christmas? A man who comes down the chimney with presents for reportedly ‘good children’?

GK Chesterton explored this question in a 1935 article for the National Catholic Reporter, ‘Santa Claus and Science: On imagination, faith, and the natural fancy of children’. Here is an extract; read the whole essay by following the link below.

What do our great modern educationists, our great modern psychologists, our great makers of a new world, mean to do about the breach between the imagination and the reason, if only in the passage from the infant to the man? Is the child to live in a world that is entirely fanciful and then find suddenly that it is entirely false? Or is the child to be forbidden all forms of fancy; or in other words, forbidden to be a child? Or is he, as we say, to have some harmless borderland of fancy in childhood, which is still a part of the land in which he will live; in terra viventium, in the land of living men? Cannot the child pass from a child’s natural fancy to a man’s normal faith in Holy Nicholas of the Children, without enduring that bitter break and abrupt disappointment which now marks the passage of a child from a land of make-believe to a world of no belief.

6 December: Ho, ho, No!

I was warned about Manchester’s 2019 Santa well before I saw it. Now it’s difficult to unsee the thing. As a representation of a saintly bishop it leaves a lot to be desired! The little Kentish village of Barfrestone has a better one.

Here he is, recognisably a bishop, recognisably blessing his people (I doubt the Mancunian’s gesture could be so interpreted), with symbols of his generous charity: the three gold coins for the dowries he gave to three girls who might otherwise have been enslaved; the little boys he rescued from drowning, and a representation of the little church of Saint Nicholas.

We in L’Arche Kent called by during our community pilgrimage last year, for it was in this village that the community was born more than 40 years ago. I was on a sort of pilgrimage to Manchester, not to tip my hat to Santa by Piccadilly Gardens but to visit my mother and my daughter; two good reasons for the journey on a murky day in Manchester. Since my daughter has left town there’s only my mother, but she is isolating herself and outsiders are meant to keep away from Greater Manchester. So thank God for the internet!

Today, 6 December, is Saint Nicholas’ feast day. We can’t do much about the hijacking he has been subjected to by the forces of Mammon, but we can find ways to be generous, maybe in secret, as he often was.

And let us use this season of Advent to make straight the paths of the Lord, through marshland, mountain, or Mancunian murk!

Merry Christmas Manchester!

December 6, Praying with Pope Francis: The Future of the Very Young

Pope Francis’s Missionary Intention for December is:

That every country take the measures necessary to prioritise the future of the very young, especially those who are suffering.

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas, an early Greek Christian bishop who is counted as patron of children. Here he is with three little boys he is said to have rescued, his cope decorated with gold coins for the dowries he paid to protect three girls from human trafficking. He is holding an image of Barfrestone church in Kent; the Latin says ‘St Nicholas, patron of this church.’

Nicholas was a popular saint because he did what he could for children. Pope Francis is not thinking merely of governments looking after the children in their own countries, but of our care – we as members of our nations – doing what we can for the children in our own countries and elsewhere in the world. Even a packet of biscuits in the food bank, or a few pounds or euros to an education or health charity can provide for the future – perhaps the immediate future – of a child in danger.

On the feast of the patron of children, let us pray for children everywhere, and for all those who care for them, parents, teachers, health workers.

• Saint Nicholas, pray for us.
•  Come Lord Jesus, Emmanuel.

 

December 6th: Daily Pilgrimage, Saint Nicholas

We can travel, indeed we have travelled, to places of pilgrimage within the United Kingdom and beyond. I won’t say East, West, home’s best. I would return to Aberdaron, St Maurice, Rome, and many places that I love, yet we have our Cathedral which has many corners that sometimes catch the eye. And just a few minutes’ walk from home.

This Cross is on the altar in the dark Saint Nicholas’ Chapel – his feast is today, December 6^th.

Patron of children, the original and best Father Christmas; he makes his annual procession through Canterbury each Advent, allowing frazzled shoppers the chance to make their day a pilgrimage.

Let’s celebrate his generous and imaginative care of his flock, but remember that he drew his inspiration from the one whose Cross is represented here.

Saint Nicholas, pray for children.

Saint Nicholas. pray for parents and grandparents, who have to improvise all the time. May we share your wise approach to child care!

And Let’s pray for a former priest at St Thomas’ Canterbury, Bishop Nicholas Hudson, auxiliary in Westminster.