I started thinking about St. Nick in November

I have been writing alongside the liturgical readings of the season, however today I was pulled off track by something that I have never read into before. I wanted to write about St. Nick and I know as I now write in November, getting so close to the holiday season, many will read this title and think about Santa Claus. Hey. If it works! Cheers to your pumpkin spice latte.

I am speaking of the Jewish Pharisee, Nicodemus, who later became a Saint in the Catholic Church. How did a Pharisee become a Saint? If anyone could give hope that sainthood is attainable, St. Nico would be a great cause for celebration.

Here’s how I got there this morning. I was reading a letter from Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Father Reginald was a theological doctor and advisor to Saint John Paul II, before he became Pope. At the end of his letter, he stated something that I had never given much thought to.

“Indeed he sharply rebukes the Pharisees who are obstinately rooted in their pride, but only because he desires to preserve souls from error… He also wishes to give the Pharisees a last warning which would still save them if they were not hardened in their pride. In thus warning them, Jesus still loves them.”

That last line caught my eye. “Jesus still loves them.”

Of course he does, he’s Jesus. I began to think about every person that opened their hearts and eyes to who Jesus was while he walked the earth. Everyone that recognized Him as the Christ had a turning point. How could someone not be changed by Him? I thought about the Pharisees and how hardened they must have been in their own pride to adamantly deny Jesus even as a teacher. Did any of the Pharisees listen?

Yes, we know of one for sure. Nicodemus.

John 3:1–21

All of this describes a scene where a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews met with Jesus. He saw Jesus as a teacher and wanted to know more. This is where Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be born of the spirit. Jesus foreshadows his death on the cross as the purpose that He has come. John 3:16 is one of the most famous lines of the Gospel.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Here is the biggest nugget of truth used throughout all of Christianity and Jesus is delivering it to a Pharisee. He dumps all kinds of revelation about our existence and purpose into the lap of Nicodemus. Jesus says that he is the Son of Man, he is revealing that he is the Messiah. I mean this is a TedTalk about the meaning of life! It’s HUGE. Nico must have been floored. We never get his reaction to this meeting within the Word, but he must have fallen to his knees. We know that Nicodemus continued to meet Jesus in secret. He became a secret follower of Christ and in a way that did not compromise his name, his marriage, or his family. He waded into the pool while Jesus was asking everyone to cannonball into the deep end. Nicodemus, like so many Christians today, was so embedded into the world, that he agonized change. 

 Nicodemus must have struggled with giving up everything and following Jesus just as the other disciples had done. We know Jesus said that one must give up their life to be His follower. Jesus would have asked Nicodemus for no less. We know that Nicodemus did not give up his way of life, at least not initially. We see him later defending Jesus to the other Pharisees, yet still not a public declaration of Christ as the Messiah. He was still a secret friend, although I am sure some heads began to turn when Nico spoke up for Jesus. I can imagine that Jesus probably called Nicodemus a friend. For years, I had moved on from this passage. I believed Nicodemus failed. I saw myself in Nicodemus, not wanting to give up the treasures I had stored up in life. I didn’t want to leave relationships to follow Jesus for fear that I would hurt those that I loved. I was afraid that I would be judged as crazy and ridiculed for being eccentric or lazy to the world. Fearing that I had missed my time, and my moment to follow Jesus in the way that he asked, I moved on. I tried to be a good Christian from a safe distance. I believed in Jesus but hoped for the best in my salvation.

As I studied this setting, just for kicks, I decided to google search Nicodemus as a Saint in the Catholic church. There he was. Not only that, but a short summary of the search results revealed/reminded me (although I had never made the correlation) that Nicodemus was at the crucifixion. He helped remove Jesus and prepare him for burial giving Him full Jewish rights. A man of Nicodemus’s stature and holiness, washing and anointing the body of Jesus, who was then buried as a Jew. What an honor. What a powerful statement of love. There were very few of Jesus’s followers at the cross. The large number of disciples, many of whom Jesus loved dearly, were not present. Here we have a Pharisee deeply honoring and loving Jesus. A member of the same Jewish sect that were the villains of the gospel story, time and time again. Jesus was rejected and scorned by the religious leaders. Ultimately they drove Him to the cross. The man that I thought had abandoned Jesus, the same man who had weighed his worldly possessions and could not part with them, had shown up to the foot of the cross.

John 19:39–40

“Nicodemus, the one who had first come to Him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices according to the Jewish burial customs.”

The financial cost for 75–100lbs of myrrh and aloes alone would have been worth thousands of dollars by today’s standards. It was close to 5 times more than the normal burial amount. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus carried the 175lbs body of Jesus and 100lbs of burial materials through the streets of Jerusalem. They would have faced persecution during and immediately after burying Jesus. Their life would have never been the same. They were giving up their wealth, status, and reputation because they knew who Jesus was. We don’t know what happens to Nicodemus after the burial, but I would like to think that he continued preaching the Gospel and gave himself fully to Christ. In the Church’s regard, we know that he met Jesus in heaven as a Saint.

This gives me so much hope. God’s will be done whether we accept it and seek it out, or whether we surrender to it at the end of our life. God will make something good come from our poor decisions so long as we turn to Him. Saint Nicodemus, the patron Saint of curiosity in the Roman Catholic Church was first a Jewish Pharisee and keeper of the Old Covenant laws. He surrendered to Jesus after a long struggle with the world and with himself. Jesus never gave up on him and Nico never gave up on Christ. There is always time to submit to God’s will and receive salvation. Amen.