Interlude for the Day of Saint Nicholas, Patron Saint of Children

The sixth of December is the feast-day of Saint Nicholas of Myra, who among other things is the patron Saint of children.

From Benjamin Britten’s exquisite cantata “Saint Nicholas”, let us hear part seven, which reflects upon one of the lesser known legends of the Saint: the haunting tale of the raising to life of three murdered children.  In a world full of disappeared children, children abducted, trafficked, abused, raped and tortured and enslaved and often murdered, so many of them victims of Muslim jihad – whether in Africa (the girls of Chibok), in Pakistan, in Egypt, in Syria and Iraq, or even within the West (the thousands of underaged British girls dragged down into a special kind of hell-on-earth by Muslim ‘grooming’ gangs) – let this strange little story stand as a defiant affirmation of Christian hope, the conviction – guaranteed by the resurrection of our Lord – that there is, and there will be, as David Bentley Hart puts it, “a future that overcomes all endings.”

Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.

A joyful Saint Nicholas’ Day to all Christian readers of New English Review.