Today, You are reminded that on 

December 6/19th, the Holy Church celebrated the memory of 

St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, 

Greetings to all and best wishes 

for this joyful Feast!

"Holy Hierarch Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in 

Lycia, was glorified as a great saint of God. He was born in the 

city of Patara in Lycia (on the southern coast of the peninsula of 

Asia Minor). He was the only son of the pious Theophanes and Nona, 

who had promised to dedicate him to God. The child Nicholas, fruit 

of prolonged prayer offered to the Lord by the childless couple, 

shone forth to the people his future glory as a great miracle-worker.

Immediately after giving birth to him, his mother Nona was healed of 

sickness. From infancy, St. Nicholas set out on a life of fasting. 

On Wednesdays and Fridays, he accepted his mother’s milk only once, 

after his parents’ evening prayers.

From childhood, Nicholas became accomplished in learning Divine 

Scripture. During the day, he did not leave the church, and at 

night he prayed and read books, building within himself a worthy 

home for the Holy Spirit. His uncle, Bishop Nicholas of Patara, 

rejoiced in his spiritual accomplishments. He tonsured Nicholas as 

a reader, then elevated him to the priesthood, and made him his 

assistant, assigning him to educate the flock. In serving the Lord, 

the youth was on fire with the Spirit. In his proficiency with 

respect to questions of faith, he was like an elder and evoked 

amazement and profound respect on the part of the faithful. 

Constantly working and vigilant, remaining in prayer without 

ceasing, the presbyter Nicholas showed great charity toward his 

flock, coming to the aid of the suffering, and giving all he 

possessed to the poor. Hearing of the bitter need and poverty of a 

formerly wealthy resident of his city, St. Nicholas saved him from 

committing a great sin. The despondent parent of three adult 

daughters was contemplating giving them over to a life of 

fornication in order to stave off starvation. Sorrowing over the p

erishing sinner, the Holy Hierarch secretly threw three bags of 

gold through his window during the night, and thereby saved the 

family from degradation and spiritual ruin. Holy Hierarch Nicholas 

always strove to do acts of charity in secret, and to hide his acts 

of kindness.

Upon setting out to venerate the holy sites in Jerusalem, the bishop 

of Patara entrusted the administration of his flock to St. Nicholas, 

who assiduously carried out his assignment with love. When the 

bishop returned, St. Nicholas in turn asked his blessing to travel 

to the Holy Land. Along the way, the saint predicted the coming of 

a storm which would put the ship in danger of sinking, for he had 

seen the devil himself board the ship. In answer to the pleas of 

the despairing travelers, he used his prayer to calm the waves. By 

his prayers, a ship’s crewmember who sustained fatal injuries in a 

fall from the mast was restored to health.

At the ancient city of Jerusalem, St. Nicholas ascended Golgotha and 

gave thanks to the Savior of mankind. He bowed down and prayed at all 

of the holy sites. At night, upon the approach of the great pilgrim, 

the locked doors of the church on Mt. Zion opened by themselves. 

Having gone to all of the holy sites connected with the earthly 

service of the Son of God, St. Nicholas decided to go off into the 

dessert. He was stopped by a Divine voice which directed that he 

return to his homeland. Drawn to a life of silence, upon his return 

to Lycia the saint joined the brotherhood of a monastery known as 

Holy Zion. However, the Lord once again announced to him that a 

different path awaited him: “Nicholas, this is not field from which 

I expect you to bring forth My expected fruit. Turn and go back into 

the world, that My Name will be glorified in you.” In a vision, the 

Lord gave him the Gospels, bound in a richly decorated cover, and 

the Most-Holy Mother of God gave him an omophorion.

And so it came to pass: After the death of Archbishop John, one of 

the bishops in the Council deciding who was to chosen to be the new 

archbishop was shown in a vision that the chosen one of God was St. 

Nicholas; thereafter, he was chosen to be bishop of Myra in Lycia. 

Called to shepherd the Church of God in the dignity of a hierarch, 

Holy Hierarch Nicholas remained the same great spiritual struggler, 

manifesting to his flock the image of meekness, mildness and love 

towards man. This was especially valuable to the Church of Lycia 

during the period of persecution of Christians in the reign of 

emperor Diocletian (284-305). Bishop Nicholas, locked up in prison 

together with other Christians, lent them support, and exhorted 

them to firmly endure their bonds, trials and torture. The Lord 

kept him from harm. After the coronation of the Equal-to-the-Apostles 

Constantine, Nicholas was returned to his flock, which joyously 

greeted its teacher and intercessor. Despite his great meekness of 

spirit and purity of heart, Holy Hierarch Nicholas was a zealous and 

courageous warrior of the Church of Christ. Doing battle with the 

spirits of evil, the Holy Hierarch visited the pagan temples of the 

city of Myra and the surrounding area, smashing the idols and turning 

their temples into rubble. In 325, Holy Hierarch Nicholas was a 

participant in the 1st Ecumenical Council, at which the Nicene Creed 

was adopted, and along with Sts. Sylvester, Pope of Rome, Alexander 

of Alexandria, Spyridon of Trimethus, and others among the 318 Holy 

Fathers of the Council, he took up arms against the heretic Arius.

Burning with zeal for the Lord, and in the heat of denouncing Arius, 

the Holy Hierarch Nicholas even boxed the ears of the teacher of 

false doctrine. For this, he was stripped of his episcopal omophorion 

and placed under guard. However, several of the holy fathers had a 

vision in which the Lord Himself and the Mother of God consecrated the 

Saint a bishop, handing him the Gospels and the omophorion. The 

Fathers of the Council, perceiving that the Holy Hierarch’s zeal and 

daring were pleasing to God, glorified God, and restored His Saint to 

his Episcopal rank. Returning to his diocese, the Holy Hierarch 

brought to it peace and blessing, sowing the word of Truth, cutting 

off at the roots incorrect thinking and vain philosophizing, 

denouncing entrenched heretics and tending to those who had 

unknowingly fallen and turned away from the path. He was truly a 

light for the world and the salt of the earth, for his life was 

bright and his word was permeated with the salt of wisdom.

During his lifetime, the Holy Hierarch worked many miracles. From 

among them, he garnered the most fame for saving from death three 

men unjustly condemned by a greedy town governor. The Holy Hierarch 

bravely approached the executioner and held back the sword, which 

was already raised over the heads of the condemned. Having his 

injustice unmasked by Holy Hierarch Nicholas, the town governor 

repented and asked his forgiveness. Three military leaders sent 

by Emperor Constantine to Phrygia were also present. They could 

not yet have imagined that, having been slandered before the Emperor 

and condemned to death, they would soon likewise seek the intercession 

of Holy Hierarch Nicholas. Holy Hierarch Nicholas appeared to 

Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine and challenged him to release the 

unjustly condemned military leaders who, lying in prison, were prayerf

ully entreating the Saint for his help. He worked many other miracles 

during the long years of his service. By the prayers of the Holy 

Hierarch, the city of Myra was saved from a great famine. He appeared 

to a certain Italian merchant, and giving him three gold coins (which, 

upon awaking, the merchant found in his hand), he asked the merchant 

to bring his ship to Myra, and there sell his grain. On many occasions, 

the Holy Hierarch saved those drowning at sea, and set free those in 

prisons and dungeons.

Having lived to a very old age, Holy Hierarch Nicholas peacefully 

departed to the Lord (+345-351). His honorable and incorrupt relics 

were kept in the local cathedral church and exuded health-giving myrrh, 

from which many received healings. In 1087, his relics were translated 

to the Italian city of Bari, where they remain to this day (see 9 

May for an account of the translation.)

The name of the great Saint of God, the Holy Hierarch and 

Miracle-worker Nicholas, the quick helper and man of prayer for all 

who run to him, became famous in many countries and among many peoples

throughout the world. In Russia, many cathedrals, monasteries, and 

churches are dedicated to his holy name. No, rather, there is not a 

single town without a church dedicated to St. Nicholas. More often 

than not, churches to St. Nicholas were erected on market squares by 

Russian merchants, those who sailed the seas and who trod the earth, 

those who revered St. Nicholas the Miracle-worker as the patron of 

all travelers, both on land and on sea. Sometimes the people named 

them churches of “Nichola the Wet.” Many village churches were 

dedicated to the Wonder-worker Nicholas, whom peasants revered as a 

merciful intercessor for all working people before the Lord. Holy 

Hierarch Nicholas did not cease acting as an intercessor for the 

Russian land. Ancient Kiev passed down to us the story of how the 

Holy Hierarch saved a drowned child. After hearing the sorrowful 

prayers of parents who had lost their only heir, St. Nicholas took 

the child from the water, brought him back to life, and placed him 

before his miraculous icon in the choir loft of the Church of the 

Holy Wisdom. In the morning, the parents were overjoyed to find 

their rescued child there. Together with a multitude of people, 

they glorified St. Nicholas the Wonder-worker.

Many miraculous icons of St. Nicholas appeared in Russia, or came to 

Russia from other countries. These include the ancient (12th century)

Byzantine icon, brought from Novgorod to Moscow and depicting the 

Saint to the waist, as well as the enormous icon, written in the 

13th century by a Novgorod master. Two types of depictions of the 

Wonder-worker are especially wide-spread throughout the Russian 

Church: The first is Holy Hierarch Nicholas of Zaraisk, showing a 

full-length figure of St. Nicholas, his right hand in an attitude 

of blessing, and his left holding the Gospels. It was this icon that 

was brought to Ryazan’ in 1225 by the Byzantine Princess Eupraxia, 

who married Theodore, Prince of Ryazan’, and who perished, together 

with her husband and her infant son, during the invasion by Baty 

Khan. The second is Holy Hierarch Nicholas of Mozhaisk, which also 

depicts a full-length figure of St. Nicholas, holding a sword in his 

right hand and a city in his left. This commemorates the miraculous 

saving, through the prayers of the Holy Hierarch, of the city of 

Mozhaisk from enemy attack. It would be impossible to list all of 

the grace-giving icons of Holy Hierarch Nicholas. According to the 

prayers of the Holy Hierarch, every Russian town and every church 

is blessed with such an icon."