"One Big Self" by Stephen Rue

“As the soul becomes more pure and bare, and possesses less of created things, and is emptied of all things that are not God, it receives God more purely, and is more completely in Him; and it truly becomes one with God, and it looks into God and God into it, face to face as it were; two images transformed into one.”   -Meister Eckhart

                                                                                                   

Saint Nicholas Providing Food during a Famine

Today is St. Nicholas Day, and forty-some years ago or so it was a rather important day in my life. Because in the late 60’s and early 70’s I was often overwhelmed by the days and evenings surrounding Christmas itself, I used to compensate for my not being able to spend bunches of time with the kids by “pre-doing” Christmas a bit.

My family knew that over the centuries fat Santa had evolved in story, myth, and importance from traditions surrounding fourth-century Bishop Nicholas of Myra. The real “Nick” was born in Patra, a village located in the southern coast of Turkey. As the orphaned son of fairly wealthy parent, Nicholas, took Jesus’ word to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor” at face value and unloaded up his inheritance to help the needy, sick, and suffering. The tradition says that he dedicated his life to serving God and became well-known for his generosity, especially toward children, along with his concern for sailors and ships. Later in life Nicholas suffered for his faith during imperial persecutions with exile and imprisonment. When released from prison, he attended the Council of Nicea in 325, died eighteen years later on December 6 in Myra, and was buried in his cathedral church.

Of the many stories associated with his life, the best known rehearses his helping a gentleman with three unmarried daughters. The father was unable to raise enough money to provide his girls with dowries; as a consequence they were destined to become old maids. Some embellish the tale suggesting that they might have well ended up as prostitutes. When walking by the gentleman’s home, so it is said, Nicholas threw a bag of gold through a window on three successive nights and so saved the daughters from a life of shame. As you might imagine, yes, all were married and lived happily ever after. Such is the hagiographical nimbus of Old Saint Nick, good enough to make sure that our present jolly oaf has a decent resume, the business world’s best gift-giver.

Retelling the story of Saint Nick to our children on December 6 had two advantages. First, it nicely deconstructed the myth of Santa. Our kids were never fooled beyond the age of four or five. And second, it gave us an opportunity to finesse the 25th out of its overbearing emphasis on getting so many toys that little else mattered. We finessed by giving the children some pre-Christmas gifts on December 6, the Day of Saint Nicholas. Moreover, for several years we baked and bagged St. Nicholas cookies, tied up small branches of evergreens, and early on the morning of this day surreptitiously hung both on our neighbors’ front doors. We never told them who had hung the greens.

I still like to remember the real Nicholas, the generous saint who suffered for his faith and helped the Church think through her understanding of Christ at the Council of Nicea. I’ll say the Niceane Creed today and thank God for his witness.

Almighty God, who in your love gave to your servant Nicholas of Myra a perpetual name for deeds of kindness on land and sea: Grant, we pray, that your Church may never cease to work for the happiness of children, the safety of sailors, the relief of the poor, and the help of those tossed by tempests of doubt or grief; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Second Sunday in Advent: Mark 1.1-8

Tomorrow's Gospel reading is Mark 1.1-8.  In our Sunday Adult Seminar we will be working through the Good News of Mark because important selections from Mark's Gospel will be read in Year B.  As our Seminar's moderator, I usually prepare a three- or four-page handout, sometimes distributed in advance.  Here's is the handout for Mark 1.1-8:

Today we begin our reading of Mark in earnest.  And the very first awareness we must have about verse one is that Mark’s first sentence is radical, especially from a political point of view.  Understand the contexts.  First, there is the political context.  The powerful Roman government has been telling everyone that it has the “good news”!  Second, there is a smaller context: that of young Christian community, the scattered “house churches” established by itinerant missionaries throughout the Mediterranean.  For two decades, from the early 30s until the early 50s, there has only been talk, preaching, and “house communions” held on every Lord’s day, Sunday.  Paul and other Christian missionaries have been walking, traveling, sailing, and planting small church groups all around and throughout the Mediterranean world.  Importantly, in the year AD 50, there is no Christian Bible.  While in prison during the late 50s, Paul, often in prison, has been sending letters out for circulation among the tiny congregations.  During their times of worship, they have been reading their Hebrew and Greek (Old) Testaments. 

When does Mark write his Story?

Not hankering after glamour

The great obstacle may be not greed but the modern hankering after glamour.

Dorothy Day

A lot of our smartest, most concerned people want to come up with a big solution to a big problem. I don't think that planet-saving, if we take it seriously, can furnish employment to many such people.

When I think of the kind of worker the job requires, I think of Dorothy Day (if one can think of Dorothy Day herself, separate from the publicity that came as a result of her rarity), a person willing to go down and down into the daunting, humbling, almost hopeless local presence of the problem--to face the great problem one small life at a time.

-- Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays.  


Born in 1897, Dorothy Day was baptized in 1927.  After her conversion, Day desired to combine her activism and her faith.  Peter Maurin's brand of personalism provided the link that Day sought.  In 1933 Day and Maurin founded The Catholic Worker newspaper and house of hospitality.  Until her death in 1980, Day continued to work on behalf of her "fellow workers" and the poor.

More information about the personalism of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin is included on a PDF file provided by the National Catholic Reporter and used with persmission.  Click on the following link to read Pat Marrin's article on the personalist roots (PDF file) of the Catholic Worker Movement.