The Daily Telegraph

What good St Nick is doing in Russia

- CHRISTOPHE­R HOWSE

The relics of St Nicholas were flown from Italy to Russia on Sunday and revered in the cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (the huge church built on the site of the one dynamited on Stalin’s orders in 1931). The relics will go to St Petersburg in June before returning to Bari in July.

This initiative was made possible by the meeting last year between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, in Cuba.

St Nicholas means a lot to the Russian Orthodox Church – and not because the saint lies behind the much-mythologis­ed figure of Santa Claus. Historical­ly he lived in Asia Minor, at the heart of the eastern part of the Roman Empire from which Russia derived its Christiani­ty. Only in 1087 were St Nicholas’s remains taken from Myra by expedition­aries from Bari in Italy, where they have remained ever since. In finding out more I came across a piece of liturgy that I found a bit shocking.

Unfamiliar liturgy often is shocking, because of its strong symbolism. In the preparatio­n of bread for the Orthodox liturgy, a set of actions commemorat­es the death of Jesus on the Cross, whose side was opened by Roman soldier with a lance.

In the Russian Orthodox preparator­y ceremony, (the Proskomedi­a, in a Greek term), the bread to become the mystery of Christ’s presence is dismembere­d, as it were, by the priest, using a symbolic lance.

First a cube of (leavened) bread called the Lamb is cut out. The priest thrusts the spear into the right side of the bread to be offered, saying “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.” He thrusts it into the left side, saying: “And as a blameless lamb before his shearer is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.” Cutting above the centre of the loaf he says: “In his lowliness his judgment was taken away.” Cutting below the centre he says: “And who shall declare his generation?” When the cube has been cut free on all four sides, the priest separates it from the loaf saying: “For his life is taken away from the earth.”

I am not suggesting anything wrong in these symbolic acts. To the contrary, they match other ancient liturgies in linking the offering of the Eucharist to Christ’s offering of his body as a sacrifice on the Cross. It reminded me of the Mozarabic liturgy particular to Toledo cathedral, in which the consecrate­d bread is divided into nine parts, standing for events in the life of Christ, from the Incarnatio­n to the Second Coming.

But the relevance of the Proskomedi­a ceremony to St Nicholas is that his name is always mentioned in the Russian Orthodox Church when the priest cuts from a loaf other fragments to be offered in the liturgy.

One stands for the Theotokos (Mary, the Mother of God). Later he cuts out fragments for the living, for the dead and for himself. But, before that, he cuts out particles for the Nine Ranks of saints.

These begin with John the Baptist and proceed, through Moses; the Three Holy Children (in the fiery furnace); the Apostles; Hierarchs; Martyrs; God-bearing Fathers, such as Anthony (and Mothers, such as Mary of Egypt); Unmercenar­ies (who took no money for good deeds, such as the physicians Cosmas and Damian); the “Ancestors of God” (Joachim and Anna); and John Chrysostom, the compiler of the liturgy.

St Nicholas’s name comes among the Hierarchs, along with the exalted Cyril of Alexandria and Athanasius.

St Nicholas attended the universal church council of Nicaea in 325. Despite doctrinal wranglings, there was then no formal schism between East and West. Perhaps St Nicholas the Wonderwork­er’s sojourn in Russia will help heal it now.

 ??  ?? Icon of St Nicholas, at St Catherine’s, Sinai
Icon of St Nicholas, at St Catherine’s, Sinai
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