Posted on September 25, 2020
There's something about "Saint Nicholas" that just kicks me right into Christmas stuff, but apparently this St. Nick had nothing to do with presents for kiddos.
Wait - he is sometimes referred to as Brother Klaus, which makes me think of Santa Claus - the other name for St. Nick!
It turns out that Klaus is sometimes a person's entire name but is other times a shortened version of Nikolaus or Niklaus, which are German forms of Nicholas.
So, today's honored saint is STILL not the Christmas character we know so well. Who was this Nicholas of Flüe?
He was a hermit. Well, he was a farmer, a soldier, a judge, a husband, and a father of 10 kids. But he had a dream (or vision?) and decided that the dream was telling him that his ordinary work and concerns were taking away from his spiritual life, so he left all of that and went off to live by himself.
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| This was the area where Nicholas of Flüe lived by himself. Of course, it's probably changed a lot in more than 500 years! |
However, Nicholas was not alone all the time. He assisted at a mass every day - and supposedly he lived off of no other food other than the bread and wine used for Holy Communion (or Eucharist) for 19 YEARS!!! Also, "Brother Klaus" gave such good spiritual advice that important leaders from all over Europe came to him for counsel! And when he died at age 70, he was surrounded by his wife and grown children. So that's nice!
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| There are quite a few chapels named Brother Klaus (or similar names) in Germany and Switzerland. This German chapel (above and below) is pretty amazing! |
Apparently Brother Klaus was able to prevent a civil war between the various cantons of Switzerland, and that is one reason he is considered the patron saint of that nation.
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