St. Nicholas the Wonderworker
Stories and Prayers of St. Nicholas
A retelling of the Three Bags of Gold and the troparion of his feast
The three bags of gold
Editor's note
The story of the three bags of gold is preserved in the Synaxaria of the fourth through ninth centuries, the short lives of saints read at Matins. Distilled into folklore over a thousand years, it is the seed of every later legend of gifts that arrive at night in winter. The Orthodox memory keeps the original sharper: this was almsgiving against the trafficking of three poor sisters, given by a priest who refused to be thanked. The paragraphs below are a narrative retelling of the Synaxarion, not a direct quotation.
Summary by PurifyWritten by Purify, not St. Nicholas the Wonderworker's words.
In the town of Patara, while Nicholas was still a young deacon, lived a man who had once been rich and was now ruined. He had three daughters and no dowry for any of them. Their marriages were impossible, and he was preparing to sell them into shame in order to feed them.
Nicholas heard of it. He took a leather purse, filled it with the gold his parents had left him, and that night dropped it in secret through a window of the man's house. The eldest was married the next month. The middle daughter's turn came; again at night a second purse arrived through the window. By the third night the father was watching, and when Nicholas threw the third purse and turned to run, the man chased him into the street and caught him by the cloak.
He fell at the deacon's feet, weeping, and called him father, saviour, and friend. Nicholas told him to say nothing of it while he lived. The Synaxarion has not kept the man's name. It has kept what Nicholas did: three poor daughters spared the wages of poverty by a gift no one asked them to repay.
Troparion of St. Nicholas
Editor's note
The troparion is the standard hymn for any saint commemorated at Liturgy. Each saint has his own; their texts are among the densest theology the Church sings. The phrase 'rule of faith' (kanon pisteos) was used by Irenaeus and the early Fathers for the apostolic confession against the Gnostics, applying it to a bishop of the third century is no small praise. The hymn does not mention the wonders, the storms calmed, the prisoners delivered, the dead raised. It says only: rule of faith, image of meekness, teacher of self-control. The wonders rest on the man. The man rests on Christ.
Apolytikion of St. Nicholas, December 6 (Byzantine, fourth tone)
The Church's hymnSung by the Church about St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, not written by him.
A rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of self-control hath thy humility shown thee to be unto thy flock.
Therefore hast thou achieved high things by thy lowliness, and riches by thy poverty.
O father and hierarch Nicholas, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.