St Nicholas of Myra and His Divine Wisdom
On 19 December, the Church commemorates the feast day of one of the most venerated saints in the people’s tradition – Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker.
Saint Nicholas reveals his power of miracles and heavenly intercession through only one thing – the presence of God in him. It is this single and most important factor, the presence of God, that makes our lives truly real. How often we place our trust not in Christ but in the number of prayers we say, the bows we make or the strictness of our fasts. But it was not this that made Saint Nicholas the man we know him to be. He lived in Christ, for Him alone. The world, as it is today, as it was in the time of Saint Nicholas, lived in lies. Saint Nicholas lived for and in Christ.
When we look at children, we are touched by their brightness and carefree joy. Children, while they remain in the purity of conscience and untroubled happiness, have what they later lose as they grow older – true freedom. Time passes, and we burden our lives with chains of dependence on many factors that make us slaves. While growing up, we lose both the purity of conscience and the holiness of life. Worms of passions invade our souls, and from that originally bright, joyful freedom of childhood, nothing remains. We are darkened, and the soul is filled with the dark mist of eternal gloom.
Those who have managed to find their way out of this valley of darkness and ascend once again to the heights of light are called saints in the Church. They possess the freedom of absolute love and goodness. Any person who seeks in life not the salt of grace not the beauty of humility, not the light of love, but something else, is simulating their life, condemning themselves to a hopeless, cruel slavery. We simulate life when we, like children, make toys out of the clay of our thoughts. We grab them, like a monkey grabbing the nuts placed in a jar with a narrow neck, unable to unclench our minds, and again and again, we fall into these devilish traps.
We hold on to the world, afraid to follow Christ.
Following Him is a great risk for us. It is like jumping across an abyss in total darkness. You run, gather speed, and jump, not seeing the width of the bottomless rift ahead. You push off the ground only with faith, hope, and love, without any calculations or guarantees. Saint Nicholas jumped without hesitation. We often speed up but slow down at the last moment. It is terrifying to jump into the unknown.
But God is on the other side of the rift, and there is no other way to Him except through love and trust. We can only gain freedom in Christ when we throw off the slavery to this world. Saint Nicholas replaced all his human thoughts with holy Grace. Everything we need for salvation is given to us by God at birth. Later, we gain unnecessary knowledge, fill our brains with information that we use to increase our possessions, and those possessions, in turn, become the glue with which we attach our dead souls to this dead world. Millionaires who have amassed enormous fortunes and by the end of their lives have not received a single drop of love, kindness and faith are the most pitiable and miserable beings in the universe. More miserable than them are those who envy them. The first, at least, before going to hell, received animal pleasures and comforts from this world, while the second, having received neither, trail after them into the same abyss.
But happiness is always near – within us. The light of grace gives us the opportunity to return to the lost freedom of childhood, but with much greater strength of joy. For each of us, the image of Saint Nicholas is, above all, light, joy, purity, goodness, love, and mercy. It is no coincidence that he became the most famous saint among children. Childhood and holiness are identical concepts in Christianity, “For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
It is not intellect, knowledge or logical proofs that lead the soul to God but heartfelt feeling and spiritual intuition.
Worldly joy draws us into a world where Satan reigns, and disaster and sorrow return our minds to the heart, where Christ lives. When the deceitful world, hidden beneath the thin veil of logically correct everyday life, suddenly reveals its satanic cruelty and unpredictable essence, the human soul cannot bear it and goes mad. The world is a web, and a person often becomes like a fly, getting entangled in its nets.
In the life of Saint Nicholas, we see the paradoxical operation of the law of Divine love. The more a person strives toward people, the further they go from him. Conversely, the more we draw near to God in solitude and prayer, the more people who need our help and support come into our life. Saint Nicholas, in God, found a whole world – thousands of souls, by the word of the Gospel, were embraced by his pure soul. But at first, he aligned every breath, every inner movement of his heart, every action and thought with the Gospel. Saint Nicholas did not attained holiness through rational reasoning but through practical, heartfelt theology.
One must not divide Christ in their heart with any earthly attachment, no matter how justified it may seem. Even love for one’s children, family, or homeland should not overshadow Christ, who is our EVERYTHING. Only in this way can a person achieve the ultimate goal of their life on earth.
Christ has not gone anywhere. He has not hidden behind the clouds after the Ascension, nor has He disappeared into the endless abyss of the cosmos. He is always here and now. He stands at the door of our heart, gently, without force, humbly and quietly knocking, asking for the alms of our love. Whoever hears this knock and opens the door becomes a saint.
This is the sole purpose of our entire life.
