Put Your Shoes Out for St. Nicholas the Wonder-Worker

I love St. Nicholas. He was meek, loved the poor, and deprived himself of many good things to share with others. What a model for Advent. You can read about this great saint here and here.

Being meek didn't keep him from defending the faith with zeal. It's said that during one of the most contentious meetings during the Council of Nicea, he crossed the room and took a swing at the heretic Arius who denied that Christ was God.

Gosh, we could use some bishops like that in these days of playing kissy face with dissenters and outright heretics.

I'm putting my shoe out for St. Nicholas and asking him to fill it with spiritual intercessions that I might be more like him.

St. Nicholas, pray for us!

Sunday Meditation: Are You Drunk with Malice or Drunk with Joy?

I've always wondered how the pharisees could see Jesus perform miracles and still refuse to accept Him. After all, they saw Him cure the man with the shriveled arm. Think of watching a shrunken arm stretch out and fatten up with muscles and tendons. You can't fake it! And then there was the paralytic lowered from the roof and Jesus' saying his sins were forgiven and ordering him to take up his mat and go home. Many of the people there would have known the paralytic personally. They could have no doubt that the cure was legitimate. The blind and paralyzed cured, the possessed freed, even the dead raised. And how do the pharisees react?

"Hey, Jesus, who are you to forgive sins?" and "What's the big idea of healing on the Sabbath?"

Catholics: Called to be Radicals