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St. Nicholas — The Catholic Bishop Who Punched a Heretic in the Face · Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast

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  He crossed the room in front of the emperor and every bishop, and he punched another man
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  in the face. No, not a metaphor, not raised voices in some theology debate, an open-handed
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  shot to the face in front of everybody at the biggest church meeting in Christian history,
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  thrown by a guy who spent the last 1700 years shrinking down until kids think he's a cartoon
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  in a red suit. You think you know this man, you do not. Before any of that, before the
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  council, before the miracles, before he turned into the most impersonated saint on the planet,
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  he was just an orphan sitting on more money than he knew what to do with, standing outside
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  some poor guy's house in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to give it all away
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  without getting caught.
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  Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday Saints, episode 13. 13 weeks, 13 saints.
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  And if you've been here since week one, thank you for sticking around. If you're new here,
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  welcome to the porch. Do stick around and if this hits you, subscribe so you don't miss
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  next week. A new saint every Thursday. For my regulars, you will notice I'm changing things
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  up a little this episode. The meat and potatoes are still there, don't worry, but just served
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  up a little differently. Let me know what you think. Today's guy, you already have an opinion
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  about. This is Saint Nicholas of Myra. The actual man buried somewhere underneath the beard,
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  the belly laugh, and the eight reindeer plus Rudolph. Nobody wrote, and then the bishop
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  clocked a heretic into a Christmas song. But stick with me, because that's very much in
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  here. My wife Sarah wasn't raised Catholic, and when I told her I was doing an episode
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  on the real Saint Nicholas, She said, wait, are you about to tell me Santa Claus punched
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  somebody? Yeah, basically I am. So if you walked in expecting a cute Christmas story or one
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  you're ready to roll your eyes at, stay with me. The parts of this that sound the most made
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  up are actually pretty well documented. The part that feels the most believable, jolly
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  guy, bag of toys, workshop full of elves, that's stuff we made up 200 years ago. we're going
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  to sort out which is which. Nicholas was born around 270 AD in a town called Patera in what's
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  now southern Turkey. His parents had money and they were Christian, but he did lose both of
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  them young, probably due to some regional sickness. So while he was still a young man and not yet
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  married, he was old enough to inherit everything, but not old enough to to really know what to
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  do with it. I mean, most guys who come into that type of money that fast go out and buy
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  a boat or a hot rod or whatever the top of the line horse was back then. Nicholas did not
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  buy a boat or a horse. There was a man in town, used to have money and then lost it all, with
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  three daughters and nothing to give them for a dowry. Sounds like a small problem from where
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  we're sitting. A daughter with no dowry had exactly one grim way left to take care of herself.
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  So this father was out of options and out of hope. Nicholas heard about it. And instead
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  of showing up at the guy's door in broad daylight so everybody could see him being generous,
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  he waited until the dark, grabbed a bag of gold, and depending on which version you hear, either
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  threw it through an open window or dropped it down the chimney. where it landed in a stocking
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  somebody had hung out to dry by the fire. Which, if you think about it, means the entire concept
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  of stockings hung by the chimney with care started because a guy needed somewhere to stash some
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  cash without ringing the doorbell. He did it again for daughter number two, did it again
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  for daughter number three. This third time, the dad's been staying up waiting to catch
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  whoever's been doing this, catches him red-handed. and Nicholas begs him, please don't tell anyone.
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  He didn't want the credit. He wanted to do this generous act, but he wanted his name nowhere
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  near it. And I have to admit, that's the part that gets me. We live in a world where everybody
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  wants to be seen doing the right thing. This guy took a real risk specifically to make sure
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  nobody saw him. That's it. That's the whole seed of Christmas morning. Three bags of gold
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  in the dark, so three girls wouldn't end up with nowhere to turn if you catch my drift.
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  Somewhere between the fourth century turkey and the mall parking lot, we kept the gifts
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  and completely lost the guy. Historically, this one holds up pretty well. It's one of the earliest
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  stories anyone tells about him, written down not long after he died. Not a court transcript,
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  but about as good as ancient saint stories get. Nicholas became Bishop of Myra eventually,
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  a port town near Patera. And in the early fourth century, that job came with a real chance of
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  getting you killed. Emperor Diocletian ran the worst empire-wide crackdown on Christians in
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  Roman history. Soldiers were going town to town arresting bishops by name. Because if you
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  cut the head off of a local church, aka the church leaders, then the rest falls apart faster.
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  Nicholas was exactly who they were looking for. The old accounts say he got arrested, chained
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  up, and held for years in conditions built to break a person. Cold, stolen floor, barely
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  any food, not trying to kill you fast, trying to slowly convince you that whatever you believe
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  isn't worth what it's costing you. Tradition says he carried the marks of it on his body
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  the rest of his life. Picture that. A guy blessing babies and settling arguments between merchants
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  with scars on his wrists from the chains he wore rather than say, hey, Jesus wasn't the
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  Lord. And unlike some of what's coming, this part is about as solid as history gets. The
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  Diocletian persecution is extremely well-documented. Nicholas getting swept up and it shows up early
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  and often. If you don't buy the reindeer stories, that's fine, but Don't let that double bleed
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  backward onto the guy who did actual years in an actual Roman cell for this. Then, in 313
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  AD, everything flipped. Constantine legalized Christianity and whoever was still alive walked
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  free. Nicholas walked out a bishop who had been tortured and never backed down. That's the
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  guy who, 12 years later, walks into the most important meeting the early church ever had.
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  It is 325 AD. Constantine calls bishops in from everywhere to a city called Nicaea to settle
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  something tearing the church apart. A priest named Arius is teaching that Jesus wasn't fully
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  and internally God. That, and I quote, there was a time when he was not. Jesus in his version
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  is the greatest thing God ever made. Just made though, not equal to the father. Sounds like
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  a fine distinction from way over here, the kind of thing only theology nerds argue about, right?
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  But in 325 AD, it was not that. If Arius is right, the guy who died on the cross wasn't
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  actually God doing the dying. He was some incredibly important created being doing it on God's behalf.
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  Now, that's not a footnote. Whole cities had already rioted over this. Dock workers and
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  bakers arguing the nature of Christ in the street with the heat people bring to politics now.
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  Imagine you're a group chat on your phone, but it's the fourth century and the topic is
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  whether Jesus is God. Nicholas is in the room and according to church tradition, he's sitting
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  there listening to Arius lay out all of this in front of the entire council and something
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  in him just snaps. He gets up, walks across the floor, and hits Arius across the face.
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  All right, I gotta be straight with you on this one. The punch isn't in the earliest write-ups
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  of Nicaea. It shows up centuries later in Byzantine tradition. Now, that doesn't automatically
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  make it fake. Plenty of true stuff gets written down late just because nobody thought to record
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  it at the time. But there is a difference, a real difference between This definitely happened
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  and the church has told this story forever because it believes it's true. This one's the
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  second kind. I'm keeping it in anyway because even a story that isn't rock solid history
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  tells you something real. What the earliest Christians thought defending the faith was
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  supposed to look like. So the punch landed or it didn't. Truth be told, hitting a guy in
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  an imperial council was a serious offense. Most versions say cost Nicholas his position and
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  nearly his freedom on the spot. Stripped, thrown into a cell that same day, only reinstated
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  after a vision convinced everyone what drove him wasn't a temper problem. It was love for
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  the truth. Same guy who snuck through the dark so three sisters would never know who saved
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  them, gentle and secret, furious and public over something non-negotiable. Not two different
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  guys. One guy who could love a struggling person quietly and love the truth loudly enough to
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  risk everything in front of the most powerful man alive. That's the thing I keep landing
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  on with Nicholas. Most of us are only good at one of those. Rest of his life, he was the
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  Bishop of Myra and pretty much every story that survives him is a rescue story. Three men in
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  Myra once were falsely accused. Already sentenced already kneeling with the executioner's sword
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  in the air and tradition says Nicholas shows up at a dead sprint grabs the blade out of
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  the Executioner's hand before it comes down and gets in the governor's face until the guy
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  admits he took a bribe Three men who had made peace with dying in the next five seconds get
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  to walk home instead It's not a rescue that could be the opening scene in an action movie
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  today sailor stories, too Ships getting torn apart in storms and Nicholas miraculously shows
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  up on deck and the sea goes flat calm. A famine story where he talks grain ships into dropping
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  cargo in Myra first. Telling the captains the paperwork will still check out and it does.
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  Take it all at face value or figure some got added on because people couldn't stop telling
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  stories about the guy. Either way, the pattern never changes. He shows up uninvited for people.
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  who have run out of moves. He dies December 6, 343 or 345 A.D. buried in Myra. That date
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  becomes his feast day and for a long stretch of European history, that's the actual day
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  people gave gifts, not December 25. In 1087, sailors from Bari, Italy sail over and take
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  his remains home where they still are. People still report a clear liquid seeping from his
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  bones called manna. with an actual ceremony every year to collect it. From there, Nicholas
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  travels about as far from a fourth century Turkish bishop as a guy can travel. Dutch settlers
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  bring their own gift-giving tradition with them to New Amsterdam. That's New York now. They
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  call the version of Nicholas Sinterklaas. Now say that a few times fast and you'll hear where
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  Santa Claus comes from. A poem in 1823 gives him the sleigh and reindeer. A cartoonist gives
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  him the red suit and the North Pole address. A soda company finishes the job. By the end
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  of it, almost nothing of the real bishop survives except the gifts. The guy who did years in
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  prison for his faith got replaced by a guy who says, ho, ho. If my wife Sarah is right and
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  you walked in for a Santa punchline, I hope you are walking out with something closer to
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  an actual man. All right, back on the porch. I keep coming back to his hands. The same
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  hands that dropped gold through a window in the dark, wanting nothing back, not even a
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  thank you. The same hands that got chained up in a Roman cell, rather than deny what he believed.
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  There were years of that. The same hands that, if the story's true, crossed a room in anger
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  the second somebody explained away who Jesus actually is. We like to keep gentleness and
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  conviction in separate people. You are either the soft one or the sharp one. You pick a lane,
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  but Nicholas never picked. He was tender toward the one struggling person right in front of
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  him and rock solid on the one truth he nearly died for. Most of us can manage one of those
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  on a good day. He carried both at the same time his whole life. So. Here's the question Nicholas
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  leaves you with. Which one have you flatten yourself into? The soft one or the sharp one?
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  Gone so gentle, you have gone quiet on stuff that actually matters. The thing you would
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  have said something about five years ago, the thing you let slide now because it's easier.
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  Nicholas didn't let us slide. Not with Arius, not in that room or Gone so locked in on being
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  right that you have stopped seeing the actual person in front of you. They don't need your
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  argument. They just need somebody to show up, quietly, expecting nothing back. That's the
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  version of Nicholas nobody remembers. The one in the dark outside a stranger's window. If
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  I'm keeping it 100, most of us pick a side and call it our personality, instead of admitting
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  it's a gap. The gentle ones tell themselves silence is love. The convicted ones tell themselves
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  hardness is faithfulness. Nicholas doesn't let either of us off that easy. He hands the quiet
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  ones a bishop with scars on his wrists, a man who refused to shut up when it counted. He
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  hands the hard ones a different picture, a man in the dark outside a stranger's window giving
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  away gold. making sure the father never found out who saved his daughters. And now it is
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  time for the closing prayer. Lord, thank you for Nicholas. Thank you for a guy who gave
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  in a secret and never asked for credit. And for the fire in him that wouldn't stay quiet
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  when it mattered. For anyone whose gentleness has gone silent, give them his nerve. For
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  anyone whose convictions have gone cold, give them his willingness to show up in the dark
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  for someone who will never know his name. Help us hold both. Amen. One more thing before we
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  go. St. Nicholas is the saint of kids, sailors and pawnbrokers. Those three gold balls outside
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  pawn shops are literally his three bags of gold. Also, patron saint of Greece, Russia and unmarried
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  people. A guy who did years in prison for his faith, who tradition says Decta Heretic defending
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  it and spent the rest of his life showing up for people with nowhere else to turn is now
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  more famous than almost any Christian who ever lived and almost nobody knows who he actually
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  was. Well, that is episode 13. If this changed how you will think about Nicholas aka Santa
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  Claus next December, send it to somebody who needs the real version. Leave a review if you
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  have a minute. and next week, back to an unknown saint. I think this one's going to surprise
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  you just as much as this did. I'm John O'Connor. Thanks for sitting on the porch with me, and
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  I will see you next week.