“Certainly many of you know of an event within the life of St. Nicholas which has been preserved in the Tradition of our Holy Church and which is even now depicted on many icons of the Wonderworker of Myra. As he sat at the sessions of the First Ecumenical Council, he listened to the blasphemies of the heresiarch Arius against which this Council had been summoned. Arius defended his doctrines stubbornly, and with bitterness directly assailed the divine dignity of the Son of God. It was just this that St. Nicholas could not abide, for the Savior of mankind was dearer to him than his own life . . . and St. Nicholas slapped the blasphemer in his face! Much was the confusion of the Fathers of the Council, for there is a Canon which calls for deposition of a clergyman who would strike anyone, whether a Christian or an unbeliever, and the Fathers took all the Canons seriously. But on the other hand, St. Nicholas was held in high esteem by the Fathers of the Council for his virtues shone with a heavenly brilliance for all men to see. So it was that he was placed in seclusion until the end of the Council when his case would be discussed also. But even this penalty was set aside by divine intervention; for, one of the Fathers there was granted a revelation: he saw our Lord giving the divine Nicholas the Book of the New Testament, and the All-holy Mother of God giving him his omophorion—the vestment symbolic of the episcopacy. The Father lost no time in relating this vision to the other Fathers who speedily reinstated St. Nicholas with honors to his rightful place among them. In such a clear way did our Lord reveal that St. Nicholas’ act was not a petty outburst of human anger or malice, but that it was rather just wrath against the blasphemies of a heretic. Such a man was St. Nicholas!”
+ Metropolitan Philaret, December 18/5, 1972
Eve of the Feast of Saint Nicholas