St Nicholas

Each Advent, I enjoy listening to Benjamin Britten’s “Saint Nicolas Cantata”. Saint Nicholas, according to tradition, was bishop of Myra in what is now Turkey in the early part of the fourth century. His feast is on December 6^th.

Britten’s cantata begins by acclaiming that “Nicholas was born in answer to pray and leaping from his mother’s womb he cried: ‘God be glorified’”.

The cantata then summons Nicholas who tells us that when his parents died, he sold his lands to feed the poor; he gave his goods to charity.

On a trip to Palestine, he calms a storm at sea and prays: “O God, we are all weak, sinful, foolish men, we pray from fear and from necessity,… forgetful of thy grace. Help us, O God to see more clearly... Teach us to ask for less and offer more in gratitude to thee; pity our simplicity.”

Nicholas is chosen bishop and promises to defend God’s servants and to comfort widow. He suffers imprisonment during persecution.

In time of famine he feeds the people from the Emperor’s grain ship with no diminishment of the supply of wheat. When a butcher seized three young boys in time of famine, Nicholas restores them to their families. He provides dowries for three daughters of a poor family, saves an innocent person from execution, walks upon the water, and sits among the bishops who were summoned to Nicea where he boxed Arius’ ear.

The cantata concludes with: “He was a spendthrift in devotion to us all. We keep his memory alive in legends that our children and their children’s children treasure still.

The stories of Nicholas should sound very familiar for they are echoes of the Gospel. In the lives of the saints we find the message of Jesus incarnated in men and women of different ages and cultures. We do well to keep their memories alive.