Interestingly, I recently read a beautiful explanation of the meaning of the liturgical color of purple, which represents our Advent hope. Purple represents the setting of the evening Sun that so many times leads to a purple hue on the Horizon. This Purple of the beginning of the darkness of night, leads us to remember that after the night always comes the light and warmth of the morning Sun. And the light and warmth of the morn represent the light and the great fire of Christ’s love that can to
us after the darkness of the sin and suffering of this present world; after the cross
always comes the resurrection; after death, for those who love Christ in action, always comes a New and eternal life of oneness with the Triune God—faith in this truth and faith in the love that God has for us, this is our everlasting hope.
Because of this hope of Christ’s coming, we also realize that Christ can visit us in an ever deeper way in the here and now. If we prepare His way by confessing and repenting of our sin, that is of our failure to love Christ and neighbor, if we do this ever more sincerely and completely, Christ not only comes to us but fills us with His love, with His very self. And He transforms us and makes us like unto His own image and becomes one with us in love. He then empower us to love others with His own love, with his own heart alive in ours. Our Soul, our heart becomes as one with the God who is Love.
This action of Christ, in which He wants to come more fully to us and in us, and our openness to His deeper coming, is the source of our hope and the source of hope for the world.
But Advent also reminds that this hope of Christ, coming more fully into our lives and to the world through us, doesn’t happen in isolation. Just like we can’t have faith in isolation, we can’t hope in isolation. We hope and can hope only within a community, within a family of Believers. In other words the coming of Christ, as it happened at the first Christmas, as it will happen in the future, happens now, in the present, only within the Church community; or better yet, within the family which is the Church. And most especially it happens for us within the particular Church in our midst, which is St. Patrick’s Parish Family.
To love the Church, to ever more love this parish and every one of her members, this is the way to love Christ; this is how we prepare the way for Him. Loving the Church, defending her, and being loyal to her is loving, defending and being loyal to Christ and by doing so He comes to us, restores us to the abundant life, deepens our love and makes us one with Him; again this is our great hope and this is also the only hope for the salvation of the world. All of the saints prepared the way for Christ in this same way and this hope was fulfilled through their lives of faithfulness-the world’s hope rest on the saints. It is through them that Christ saves souls, saves the world. Our present world crisis is a crisis of saints. We need to become saints.
One such saint whose life gave hope and salvation to the world through his love and fidelity was St. Nicolaos of Myra (Myra by the way is in present day Turkey). This past week on Thursday, Decemeber 6th, as you know we celebrated the feast day of St. Nicholas. St Nicolas died on December 6, AD 343.
The fact of St. Nicholas, apart from present day commercialism of his memory and the memory of all the saints for that matter, the fact of Nicholas as with all the saints was that he truly a champion, a warrior for Christ. He was no push over, but like all saints he loved Christ and His Church; he was totally loyal to Christ by being totally loyal to Christ’s true Church. And, St. Nicholas fiercely, fiercely defended the Church and her teachings which are true and which point to He who is the Truth—Jesus the God incarnate who has come, is coming now by this Holy Mass, and who will come again fully revealed in glory at the end of the world again through the Holy Mass (don’t go looking for his coming anywhere else but at the Holy Mass for, “some will say He is here or there, don’t belive them.”
Back to our saint, early in the Fourth Century, there was a terrible heresy in the Church put forth by a very persuasive man named Arius. Arius contended that Christ was not fully divine, but a creature, created by the Father and then later raised by the Father to the level of divinity. This heresy was so pervasive that a great majority of members of the Church, including many, many of the bishops had fallen into this great evil, this great lie of the evil one. The Heresy can such a foothold in the Church that St. Augustine said that one morning the Church awakened to find that she was Arian; in other words, that most of her children had fallen into the vile error of Arius.
So, the First Council of Nicea was called in AD 325 to counter this great lie, and put the Arian heresy down once and for all for the sake of souls and of the world. It is interesting that Arius was actually present at the Council of Nicea and was called upon to explain his position and to recant his error on the inferiority of Christ and so accept the truth about the Person of Christ and Chirst’s Divine Personhood.
Also present at the Council was bishop, Nikolaos of Myra better known as St. Nicolas. Arius' nonsensical, destructive and insulting lying contentions about Our Lord became just too much for Bishop Nikolaos, who stood up and proceeded to haul off and whack Arius with a left jab directly to Arius' face, for Zeal for the Lords house consumed Nikolaos.
Everyone was alarmed by Bishop Nikolaos' action against Arius. In fact, so much so, that they failed to see it as an act of righteous indignation and immediately summarily chastised and stripped Bishop Nikolaos of his bishopric-they failed to see in Nikolaos’ actions, Christ cleansing of the Temple. Would we have more bishops and priest with such zeal, more men with such manly zeal. There is actually an ancient icon that shows bishop Nikolaos wacking Arius.
Back our story. In those days, the two things that designated a man a Christian bishop were a personal copy of the Gospels and a pallium, which is made of pure lamb’s stole signified His office as High priest and his great solicitude as Chief Shepherd for the flock; wear the pallium is to bear the sheep on one shoulders in imitation of the Master.
It’s very important to note here the fact that Bishop Nicolas had his own "personal copy of the Gospels." Of course it makes sense that a bishop would have a copy of the Gospels. But it’s important to remember that the printing press wasn't invented until the yar 1439. Before that, if you wanted a book, every word of it had to be written out BY HAND. And sense there was no modern paper it was written out on; it had to be written on vellum. And, every piece of vellum had to be harvested from an animal, every page had to be tediously and expensively hand made. So you see, for a man to have a personal copy of any written text was a HUGE, and frankly very, very EXPENSIVE, deal. So, poor Nikolaos was stripped of his very hard to come by copy of the Holy Gospel and stripped of his pallium; stripped of his dignity and office of bishop AND thrown into the equivalent of Ecclesiastical prison.
Now here is where this story becomes even more interesting.
While Nikolaos was in what was more or less prison, he received a heavenly visit from both Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Jesus lovingly spoke to Nikolaos and asked, "Nicholaos, why are you here?" And Nikolaos replied, "Because I love You, my Lord and my God." At this answer, Jesus then presented Nikolaos with his copy of the Gospels, and Our Lady herself lovingly put his pallium back on him, thus restoring his rank as a bishop.
When Nikolaos was discovered sitting calmly in his cell, still under guard, with his Gospel and his pallium, which the other bishops had locked away themselves far from Niklaos' prison cell, recognizing the significance of the event, Nikolaos was released, welcomed back by his brother bishops, and thus rejoined the Council.
The heresy of Arianism was then struck down once and for all, and the Nicene Creed (which we still recite at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass today) was authored.
By the way The anti-Arian part our Creed is:
". . . Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum,
(And [I believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ)
Filium Dei Unigenitum,
(the only begotten Son of God)
Et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.
(And born of the Father, before all ages.)
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine,
(God of God: Light of Light:)
Deum verum de Deo vero,
(true God of true God)
Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri
(Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father)
Per quem omnia facta sunt."
(by Whom all things were made.)
This story is revenant today for us, because it speaks directly to our question of love and defense of Truth and defense and loyalty of those we love—Arius was attacking Christ and Christ’s Holy Church with his heresy just as viciously as if he had been leading an army; he was thus disloyal to Christ and did not love Christ. - But Nikolaos stepped into the breach to defend his Beloved; yes, even in this case PHYSICALLY. The reason Nikolaos stepped in was because Arius was attacking CHRIST, and His Bride, the Church, which is made up of Niklaos' fellow believers - whose immortal souls were being put at risk by Arius. We are in no way taught by Christ to stand by and watch as our loved ones are attacked. The miracle in Nikolaos' cell is proof of this. Nikolaos did the right thing by standing up to Arius and dropping him on his heretical keister before God and everyone.
The Question of Christ to St Nicholas can be directed to us today. Why are you here? Why are you in this parish, this particular Church of Christ in our midst. Why are you here?
"Because I love You, my Lord and my God." And I will show this love for you by loving, defend and being loyal to Your Holy Church, which is your mystical body, by loving your Holy Church universal under her Chief Shepherd the Pope, your holy Church local under her Chief Shepherd Bishop Malloy and your particular Church the parish of St. Patrick’s and her shepherd the pastor and his associate.
In the extraordinary form of the liturgy it is interesting that for the Holy Mass offered on the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, the priest doesn’t wear white as he does on the day of the feast; on the vigil the priest actually wears purple. Purple as we have said signifies hope and the Blessed Virgin Mary is our hope. She is the one who will held us prepare the way for the Lord in our personal lives, in our parish family, our families and our world. She will, if we are loyal to her and love, she will obtain for us the grace to be loyal to, to defend and even to die for love of the Holy Church and our parish family and so show our loyality our love for Christ even to the point of shedding our blood for Him.
Faith reveals to us the Immaculate Conception is a pledge of and so the hope of salvation for every human creature. Faith reminds us that by virtue of the unique privilege of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she is our steadfast support in our arduous struggle against sin and its consequences; In her Immaculate Conception she is the source of our hope and cause of our joy, she is the mediatrix for the grace we need to love Christ and His Holy Church more fully and completely; in her and through her, Christ hastens to come to us and through her, we who were not born immaculate, can be purified, made immaculate, as we hasten to meet Him.
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