Icon of St. Nicholas of Myra,
part of modern day Turkey
Today I made a home visit to a man who was a modern day St. Nicholas, pasting our gifts to children whenever he could and a modern day Catholic Worker, opening up his house to hospitality for children and families in need. I am not sure if he knew who St. Nicholas was but he did not know, although he was one, what a Catholic Worker was. I explained to him that the Catholic Worker was a movement to open our homes and lives to those in need like he was doing.
Before him was an open bible and we had a long conversation about our spiritual beliefs and our actions. Here was one of the ‘ordinary persons’ I was talking about last night who was Replacing Mandela. He told me how when he reads a scripture he does not understand how he prays till God opens up the meaning of scripture for him.
He really believed and lived God’s will. As an example he gave me how I had arrived there. He heard about St. Vincent De Paul from a friend and had called me awhile back about getting a few beds for his ‘boys’. I told him to call the Central Office, he did, but they never acted on his call. Sometime later he called me again and this time I said to call the Central Office and if he did not get assigned a parish conference to visit him to call me back. He did call again and this time they told him that according to the computer they use, his address was ‘outside of our service area’. He lives a few blocks closer than a number of families we have visited. So I called the office and after some run around got the central office to assign his request to our conference and specifically to our team of home visitors. It turns out he needs the beds for some young children he is becoming the legal guardian of since their father and mother due to problems could no longer care for them. So I was a ‘tool’ of God’s will in his life.
There was a big bed in his living room. He explained that by saying there was a recently evicted family nearby. He took them in because they had no place to go.
The man was jolly and a little round so maybe he was good old St. Nick.
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