StNicholasMiracles - St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church

THE MIRACLES OF SAINT NICHOLAS

first written by Fr. Bill Olnhausen in 2004 and revised in 2007

St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church

Cedarburg, Wisconsin

First let’s talk about miracles. Usually they are defined as extraordinary unexplainable
events, performed intentionally by God. Actually in the Orthodox and Scriptural
understanding everything (not just miracles) fits that definition. We believe that
everything exists and all things happen by the immediate action of God. We and the
whole cosmos exist because God right now says “let it be”, otherwise we would cease to
be. Gravity works because the Holy Spirit of God right now pulls things down. He
could just as easily choose not to do so. Even sin and evil exist only by his permission
and power. Now, God does some things regularly for our good (for example, gravity,
since sticking to the surface of the planet is to our benefit), and some things God does
rarely or maybe once, and that is what people usually mean by miracle. But God does it
all, both that which happens according to the "laws" of nature, and that which we call
miraculous. In this paper I am speaking of miracles in the popular sense: extraordinary
events. Such miracles are signs to us that God is not limited by what we understand or
expect; there is always hope. Miracles are signs of what the Kingdom of God is like: filled
with wonders, especially the healing of what ails us.
Christ worked many miracles. About a quarter of the Gospel accounts describe miracles
- the major ones, of course, being his Virgin Birth and his Resurrection. He has given
some of his followers the power to work miracles too, beginning with the apostles in the
New Testament accounts. God has a longstanding habit of working through people. If he
wants the poor to be fed, he could work a miracle and produce a loaf of bread, but usually
he arranges for a charitable person to take some food to them. Likewise he allows certain
people to help him work miracles. This didn’t stop with the apostles. The history of
Christianity is filled with miracle stories. The Orthodox Church has a whole category of
saints called Wonderworkers (thaumaturges in Greek), and we are still accumulating
them: for example, Nektarios the Wonderworker, a Greek saint who died in 1920, who has
worked countless miracles since then and has become the most popular of modern saints.
One of the great Wonderworkers of the early Church was named Nicholas. St. Nicholas
was born late in the 3rd century in Asia Minor, probably in the town of Patara near the
Mediterranean coast . He must have endured the Great Persecution at the beginning of
the 4th century, when the empire tried to eliminate Christianity. He became Bishop of
Myra, a nearby seaport. (We have here at our church two stones from behind the altar of
his cathedral in Myra, now a ruin; perhaps St. Nicholas walked on these stones or the
stone floor they came from.) Bishop Nicholas loved his people and his people loved him.
Over the years he has become the Church’s prototype of the good pastor. There have been
many stories passed down about him. Now, it is important to say that we cannot
document these stories; he had no biographer as some early saints had, let alone four of
them as Christ did. Nicholas left no writings; he did not get recorded on videotape. All
we have are stories about him as people passed them down. So far as we can tell they
were first written down a couple of centuries after his death, so don’t take them for more
than they are. Stories can get amplified and refined over the years. But also don’t take
them for less than they are. The stories tell us the kind of person Bishop Nicholas was,
the sort of things he did - and which he still does, as you will hear. There are many similar
stories from modern times, wonders still performed by Nicholas and other saints, both
ancient and modern, living both on earth and in heaven. The wonders done by saints of
our day are every bit as startling as these ancient stories of St. Nicholas - which makes
the old miracle stories far more believable.
Here are some of the stories passed down about miracles done by Bishop Nicholas while
he was on earth. It was told that while he was still a priest, not yet a bishop, he was sailing
to the Holy Land on pilgrimage; a great storm arose, and Fr. Nicholas by his prayers
calmed the sea. Another story tells of three boys who had been murdered by an innkeeper,
their bodies stuffed in a pickle barrel - horrible crimes are not a modern invention
- and how Nicholas found them and raised them to life again. There is a story of how there
was a famine in the region, and the captain of a merchant ship carrying wheat on the
Mediterranean was startled to see a man suddenly standing beside him, who begged him
to sail his ship to Myra, and then he was gone. So the captain did so, and there was the
same man waiting for him at the dock, who was, of course, Bishop Nicholas. A story tells
of three military men from Myra who, out of jealousy, had been falsely accused of treason
and were being held in prison awaiting execution. All attempts to free them had failed -
until one night the emperor Constantine awoke terrified to see a man standing beside his
bed, who identified himself as Bishop Nicholas of Myra and threatened the emperor with
disaster if he didn’t free the men. Constantine checked it out, found the men were
innocent and had them released. These were only some of the miracle stories passed
down. Maybe even before his death he was called Nicholas the Wonderworker. (There
have been quite a number of saints, by the way, who have had the ability to know events
from afar, and a few who have been able to remain in one place but also appear elsewhere.
One 20th century Greek elder occasionally appeared to people to give them counsel, while
those around him knew he had never left his cell. He always denied it, saying it was just
someone pretending to be him, but his companions knew better.)
Bishop Nicholas died in the mid 4th century. We don’t know the year, but we do know
the day, December 6, because holy men and women were (and are) commemorated at
services held in their memory on the day of their death - and St. Nicholas Day has always
been December 6. Bishop Nicholas died - and from his body there began to pour forth a
clear sweet-smelling liquid which the Church calls myrrh, for lack of knowing what else
to call it, with healing qualities. (This also has happened with a number of saints - St.
Demetrios of Thessaloniki, for example - including a few in recent years.) There began to
be many healing miracles. The story of the myrrh might be hard to believe except for one
thing: the body of St. Nicholas is still exuding the same fragrant myrrh. I’m getting
ahead of the story, but in the 11th century merchants from Bari in southern Italy came
and more or less stole St. Nicholas’ body and took it home, where it is still lying in St.
Nicholas Roman Catholic Basilica in Bari. It is in a quiet place with a holy happy feeling
about it, beneath the main church, with a small Orthodox chapel to the left - an encouraging
sign of ecumenical cooperation - where the Divine Liturgy is celebrated in Italian.
St. Nicholas' body is still mostly incorrupt (shriveled but still there, not just bones) lying
in a pool of clear liquid which upon analysis in the early 20th century was found to have
no bacterial content. How do we know this? Because every year on the feasts of St.
Nicholas, his tomb is opened, and a priest removes some of the myrrh. Over the centuries
a whole cottage industry has grown up of making fancy bottles to hold and distribute the
myrrh. We have some here which I brought back from Bari, for anointing on the feasts of
St. Nicholas. There are still many healings. Small relics of Bishop Nicholas’ body have
been distributed all over the world, most of which I suppose have flowed out with the
myrrh. We have one imbedded in our own altar. These are our physical connections
with the real live flesh and blood and bone, myrrh-streaming St. Nicholas of Myra.
Returning to the early centuries: Pilgrims flocked to Myra in great numbers, and they
took devotion to St. Nicholas home with them, and his fame and his miracles spread
through the world, beginning along the Mediterranean and then north into Slavic lands
where in Russia to this day more churches are named after St. Nicholas than any other
saint, and west to the far reaches of Spain and Britain where Nicholas was one of the most
popular of saints. He came to the New World. After the Protestant reformation when
devotion to saints was mostly abolished, Nicholas moved on in disguise in Protestant
regions, for some centuries known as Sinter Klaas in Holland, who became Santa Claus
in America. Today he’s reemerging as himself again - but that’s another story. So this
obscure 4th century bishop became and has remained the most popular saint in the
world, except for Mary the Mother of God herself. How did this happen? Because of his
miracles. People asked for Nicholas’ help and often they got it. He is one of those saints
who have done their greatest work on earth after their bodily death.
From all over the world come stories of the miracles of St. Nicholas. I recently went on the
internet and checked out Saint Nicholas and found 17,990,000 entries. I didn’t have time
to check out quite all of them! There have been many “ordinary” healings, but let me tell
you a few of the more extraordinary stories. They began early. Not long after his death, a
ship was sailing from Alexandria with pilgrims headed for Myra, when a great storm
came up and the ship was about to sink. The people began to call out to St. Nicholas to
help them. To their amazement the saint himself appeared and calmed the storm. This
event is regularly portrayed in icons. St. Nicholas has long been the patron saint of
seafarers who before they go to sea often go to church and light a candle before his icon.
There is a quaint story from old Constantinople of a poor old man and woman devoted to
St. Nicholas who always lit a big candle in church on his feast. One St. Nicholas Day they
had nothing left but a cow. The old woman said, "We’re not going to live long anyway; so
sell the cow and use the money to buy the candle". The old man did, and went to church
and lit the candle. When he got home he found his wife upset. Said she, “An old priest
brought the cow back; he said he was a friend of yours, and then he left. Why didn’t you
sell the cow?" She described the old priest - and then they both realized it had been St.
Nicholas. When the emperor heard the story he gave them money to support them for the
rest of their lives.
A story from Ukraine (I don’t know the date) tells of a young couple who were sailing on
pilgrimage to visit a shrine, with their little son. The mother fell asleep, and the little boy
got away and fell overboard and was lost. They returned home desolate, and turned to
St. Nicholas for consolation. Next morning when the local church was unlocked, crying
was heard, and there before the icon of St. Nicholas lay a very wet little child. They called
in the parents and sure enough it was their boy.
Let’s take some more recent stories. In the late 19th century there was a man named
John Grazes (the story was recorded by his great great granddaughter) who lived on the
island of Patmos - where St. John the apostle received his Revelation. He was captain of
his own boat and ferried merchandise between Patmos and other islands in the eastern
Aegean. Being a seaman he honored St. Nicholas. Once when they were off Patmos a
great storm came up so quickly that John and his crew realized they would never make it
to port. They prepared to die and began to pray to St. Nicholas. Then they noticed
something radiant floating towards the boat and realized it was, of all things, the Grazes
family icon of St. Nicholas. John pulled it into the boat, and immediately the waters near
the boat were stilled. All about them the storm raged with enormous waves, while
around them the sea was completely calm, and they sailed quietly to shore, with not so
much as a drop of rain touching them. (I know a similar story from some fishermen in the
Gulf of Alaska involving St. Herman of Alaska, which took place only a few years ago.)
John took the icon back home, but it refused to stay there. (There are many stories of
icons that have minds of their own.) Some years later the family noticed the St. Nicholas
icon was missing from the icon corner of their house; they searched, but it was nowhere
to be found. Some while later a family friend was walking on the other side of the island,
noticed something beside a tree, recognized it as the Grazes’ St. Nicholas icon and
returned it to them. A few days later it was missing again. John went to the place where
his friend had found it before, and there it was again. He took the icon home and said he
had concluded that St. Nicholas wanted a chapel built on that spot. He honored the
saint’s wishes. The morning the chapel was to be consecrated, the icon was gone again.
They found it in the new St. Nicholas chapel waiting for them.
In 1890 in Sitka, Alaska, a Russian Priest Fr. Duhov was visited by a delegation from the
pagan Tlingit Aukwanton tribe of Juneau, a seafaring people, who said their prince
Yarkon and all the people wished to be baptized. They promised to donate land and build
a church there, but the name of the church had to be St. Nicholas. They told this story:
A young Tlingit man had had a vision of an old white man who advised him to go to Sitka
and be baptized. The young man soon became ill and called the elders of the village and
told them the same old man had come to him again, telling him all the people should be
baptized. The young man died, but soon other Tlingits began to have the same vision.
Bishop Nikolai of the Russian Orthodox Church sent a priest to Juneau and began the
baptisms. The entire tribe became Christian and soon built St. Nicholas Church, for they
all believed firmly that the old man who had visited them was St. Nicholas. They had
never heard of him before he had appeared to them. Their descendants are Orthodox
Christians to this day, have been instrumental in ending feuding among the native
peoples of the region, and are still deeply devoted to St. Nicholas.
In Siberia in a midwinter after the Communist revolution when Russia was torn by civil
war, the White Army was retreating. Entering a village they seized a man suspected of
collaborating with the Reds, locked him up and assigned a lieutenant to take him out and
execute him the next day. That night the lieutenant was sitting alone writing out the
formal accusation when there came a knock at the door. He opened it and in walked an old
man wearing a black headdress such as Orthodox monks wear and a black rassa (cassock).
"Officer", the old man said, "you have arrested an innocent man. Do not kill him." "Who
are you?" asked the lieutenant. "I am Fr. Nicholas from the local church", he answered,
and he left. The lieutenant thought it over and decided to release the prisoner. Early
next morning he took the man and told the others he would now kill him. Instead when
they got some distance away he gave him some bread and said, “Into the woods with you,
and don’t cross our path again.” He returned to the village and went to the church to
find the priest. It was locked. He asked a peasant, "Where does Fr. Nicholas live?" The
peasant answered, "He’s dead. The Reds shot him years ago." The lieutenant, thoroughly
puzzled, got keys to the church, went in, and saw on his right a very unusual icon of St.
Nicholas, portrayed wearing monastic headdress and a cassock. It was the old man who
had come to him the night before.
There are many more stories, but would you like to move closer home? How about
Michigan City, Indiana, in 1996? At about 6:30 a.m. on the feast of St. Nicholas,
December 6, 1996, Fr. Elias Warnke and Reader (cantor) Timothy Tadros opened the
door of St. George Orthodox Church, Michigan City, to get things ready for the feast day
services. They smelled a sweet fragrance like roses which got stronger as they went into
the church. As they checked to see where it was coming from, Fr. Elias looked at the icon
of St. Nicholas which was on a stand on the analogion and saw glistening streams of
liquid running off it. It came from the forehead - three streams of myrrh. (Weeping icons
of the Theotokos, the Mother of God, are not uncommon in the Orthodox Church. I’ve
seen three of them myself, and I know many other firsthand accounts. So far as I know
the myrrh always comes from her eyes. Myrrhstreaming icons of St. Nicholas are rare. I
know of only one other, at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida. As with St.
Nicholas himself, the myrrh from his icons has come from his body.) The icon at Michigan
City was not an original; it was a reproduction printed on paper, laminated and glued to
a board - made by the monks at St. Isaac’s Skete in Boscobel, Wisconsin, and because it
was an imperfect copy they had put it in the reject bin. Fr. Elias had picked it up because
it was free. The myrrh was coming off or through the plastic laminate. There could be no
human cause: only three persons had keys to the church, and besides they could see the
myrrh flowing off of it. (There was an icon in a home in Milwaukee. For years, when the
old lady who owned it prayed, it exuded so much myrrh that her daughter complained
that she was continually having to wipe it up! At St. George Antiochian Orthodox
Church, Cicero, Illinois, in the 1990s, they filled bowls with the myrrh that flowed from
their weeping icon of the Theotokos.) As is the usual practice, the priest exorcised the
icon just in case (the devil can work wonders, too); the myrrh kept coming. There were
some healings: a woman previously diagnosed with untreatable cancer and desperate (she
was raising her little orphaned nephew alone and had been told she two years to live) was
anointed with the myrrh; when she visited the doctor the cancer was gone. A man took
myrrh home and anointed his wife who had been bedridden for two years; he left and
came back to find her in the kitchen fixing dinner. A woman was apparently cured of
chronic alcoholism. Following the usual pattern, the icon exuded considerable myrrh for
a while, then it became intermittent and eventually stopped. Don’t ask me to explain.
I’m just describing. But as I say, I have seen weeping icons.
Do you want to come even closer home? How about Cedarburg, Wisconsin? This story
is not as striking as the others, but it happened to us. Here is how our St. Nicholas
Church came to be. I need to start with my personal story. I had always been drawn to
St. Nicholas even when I thought he was just Santa Claus. I remember asking my
mother when I was little, "How long has Santa Claus been around?" She, a Protestant
who didn’t know much about St. Nicholas, answered, "Forever I guess". That was my
first inkling of eternity, the first time I tried to imagine "forever". I think it set the
course of my life - and it came from St. Nicholas, in his Santa Claus disguise. When I
became Episcopalian I found out about the real St. Nicholas. On St. Nicholas Day we
would have someone dress up in bishop’s vestments and collect toys for poor children, as
we do also here at St. Nicholas, Cedarburg. So I had long had a St. Nicholas connection.
But then I came to know St. Nicholas personally. The old stories say that just to look into
the face of Bishop Nicholas was to know joy and the love of God. I first saw the face of St.
Nicholas in an Orthodox bishop on Crete, Bishop Irenaeus of Kastelli, in 1985 . His face
radiated with sweetness, good humor and love, and I could see how his people loved and
treasured him. That night I wrote in my journal, "Remember that face”. Two weeks
later in a shop near the cathedral in Athens I saw that face again, the face of Bishop
Irenaeus on an icon of St. Nicholas. Later I came to realize that it was the other way
around: St. Nicholas is the model for Orthodox pastors, and it was Bishop Irenaeus who
looked like St. Nicholas. I had to have that icon, that face. I spent far more than I
intended and brought the icon home. I was not Orthodox at the time - I was pastor of the
Episcopal Church in Mequon. I hung the icon on the wall of the church and knew
enough to put a candle beside it, but I had yet to discover how icons and saints work.
One day a woman from the church said to me, "Have you noticed how his expression
changes?" I answered, "No..." But I began to watch, and sure enough. I don’t mean
the paint moved - it didn’t - but sometimes he would be in a happy mood, sometimes he
would be stern or thoughtful. Someone suggested that I was just seeing my own moods
in the icon, so I checked that out. Sometimes I was, but sometimes I wasn’t. At times I
would be in a good mood, and he wouldn’t be pleased at all. This went on. All this time I
had been thinking and studying and praying and had come to know in my heart that I
needed to be Orthodox. (As to why, that is another story I won’t go into here.) I didn’t
know how to do it: We had a daughter in college to support and a son approaching college
age, and we couldn’t see how I could afford to start all over again. Besides, I loved the
people in my church and didn’t want to abandon them. I had been talking to people one
on one about Orthodoxy, wishing somehow I could make the congregation Orthodox, with
no success. “But we’re not Greek”, they would say. One evening I came back from an
Anglican clergy meeting very aware that I didn’t belong there any more, needing to be
Orthodox so badly, just at my wits’ end - and I went to stand before the icon of St.
Nicholas. Obviously I was catching on to icons: I had developed a relationship with St.
Nicholas. I, feeling so weary and demoralized, looked at him - and for the first and only
time (I’ve never been able to see it again) he looked smug, extremely pleased with himself,
like the cat who swallowed the canary, as they say. And I lost it. I don’t know if I spoke
aloud or not, but I angrily said to him, "How can you be so smug while I’m so
miserable?" And then - and again I don’t mean I heard words; it wasn’t like that -
somehow he told me about how St. Nicholas Orthodox Church was coming, and that I
didn’t have to worry about it; he had it well underway, and if I just didn’t get in his way
it was going to happen. I know I stood there with my mouth open. Not long after that,
while I stood before a weeping icon at St. Nicholas (only later did I realize the significance
of that) Albanian Orthodox Church, Chicago, I found my voice to go back and start
speaking publicly about becoming Orthodox. I won’t say that I took St. Nicholas’ advice
entirely: I did worry from time to time over the next couple of years, especially when in
1989 my Episcopalian bishop fired me for promoting Orthodoxy. But in my heart I knew
what was happening. I said I would leave my church, but only if I could take that icon of
St. Nicholas with me. Most of my parishioners had no problem with that!
A small group of us from my former church contacted the Antiochian Archdiocese and
got permission to try to organize a mission. In September 1989 His Grace Bishop
ANTOUN came out to get us started, and we began. We were quickly joined by a few
cradle Orthodox. When we grew big enough we submitted three possible church names
to His Eminence Metropolitan PHILIP, and he chose one: St. Nicholas Church, of course.
Fr. Thomas Hopko, then at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, who knew we were getting started
but not of our connections with St. Nicholas, sent us a relic of a saint which was St.
Nicholas, of course. We purchased our church building from the Lutherans and, eager to
get out of the dingy basement where we had been meeting, moved in as soon as possible -
which turned out to be on St. Nicholas Eve, of course, in 1994. I have discovered by
experience that when I turn to St. Nicholas for help, things happen. When I am in
trouble he gets me out of it. Some years ago I was here in church thinking that we
founders were getting older, and we were not picking up any young families, and I was
tempted to worry. Then I remembered that I had been told not to do that, so I said, very
casually, "Holy Nicholas, we need some kids around here." Almost immediately young
families began to arrive. We now have more than sixty children and youth in the church.
We have always had enough money. We have never had to leave a bill unpaid. I have
been supported full time since our founding. This little congregation of about 200 people
has been able to give probably $300,000 away to the Archdiocese and to charities. Often
money arrives in very unexpected ways. How to explain it? One of our treasurers
coined a term for it: the Saint Nicholas Factor. We have attracted wonderful people who
give of themselves so generously in every way and who refuse to fight: we have had no
factions, very few arguments, so much peace and love and joy and fun. I feel as I have felt
from the beginning: that this really is St. Nicholas’ Church. He truly is in charge here.
And that now much-kissed icon I brought back from Greece has a place of honor on a
stand just inside our church, so he is the first thing people will see as they enter.
I really think that about the year 1985 (earth time) the Lord Jesus said to St. Nicholas,
"We need an Orthodox Church on the north side of Milwaukee", and St. Nicholas said to
the Lord, "I’ll work on that Olnhausen fellow". Or maybe it was before 1985. My wife
and I were at Milwaukee Irish Fest a few years ago. My maternal grandfather was Irish,
a Collins, and I was always very attached to that side of the family. We saw a chart giving
the origins of Irish family names, so I looked up Collins - and again my mouth fell open. It
read, “Collins, derivative of Nicholas". Has St. Nicholas had all this in mind from long
before I was born?
So that is my little miracle story, our miracle story. Perhaps it is not as dramatic as some
of the others, but I am convinced that it was by the intervention of St. Nicholas the
Wonderworker that St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, Cedarburg, Wisconsin, came to be.
And so, generation after generation, the miracles of St. Nicholas continue.