Nicholas of Tolentino - The Saint Who Raised 100 Children from the Dead

THE SAINT WHO RAISED 100 CHILDREN FROM THE DEAD

Saint Nicholas of Tolentino (1245-1305) was born in Sant'Angelo in Pontano, a small town in the Marche region, from two devout Christians. He is famous for his gifts as a thaumaturge and particularly invoked for the liberation of souls in Purgatory.

He is famous for his gifts as a miracle worker and particularly invoked for the liberation of souls in Purgatory. Saint Nicholas of Tolentino (1245-1305) was born in Sant'Angelo in Pontano, a small town in the Marche region, from two devout Christians. According to tradition, his parents chose his name in gratitude to St Nicholas of Bari, to whom they had prayed because they could not have children. He decided to embrace religious life after listening to the sermon of an Augustinian monk, centred on a teaching from the First Letter of John 2:15-17:

"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever."

He professed his solemn vows among the Hermits of Saint Augustine before he was nineteen. At 24 he was ordained a priest by St Benvenuto Scotivoli. He was sent from one convent to another, until in 1275 he was transferred permanently to Tolentino (about twenty kilometres from his native town), where he lived preaching almost every day until his earthly death, thirty years later. He was called “the angel of the confessional” because of the time he dedicated to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and because, in order to help the faithful to come closer to God, he often took upon himself the burden of penance. He fasted four days a week on bread and water and kept vigil in prayer until late at night, sleeping a few hours on a straw mattress. On Fridays, in union with the Passion of Christ, he would flagellate himself with a scourge that he had made himself.

He had an unparalleled solicitude towards the poor. He continually urged the prior to be generous in his donations, he brought bread to the needy in person and he went knocking on the doors of the rich to collect alms for them. He was also very well known as an exorcist and there are traces of this charism of his even after he went to Heaven, as testified by the various ex-voto that indicate him as a liberator of the possessed. He had a filial love for Our Lady.

In the midst of the sufferings and renunciations offered to God, he was gratified with extraordinary mystical experiences. The most famous is the vision he had the night between 9 and 10 December 1294 when he observed the angels in the act of relocating for the first time the Holy House of Nazareth to the Marche region, then part of the Papal States.

Concerning his miracles, Nicholas is reported to have resurrected over 100 children from the dead including several who had drowned together. Another time, when nine passengers on a sinking ship asked for his help, he appeared in the sky, wearing the black Augustinian habit, radiating golden light and holding a lily in his left hand and with his right hand, he quelled the storm.

He is the patron saint of souls in Purgatory.

The Catholic Church formally defined the doctrine of purgatory during Nicholas’ lifetime, at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274. The doctrine teaches that when a person dies in God’s grace, he or she either goes straight to heaven or undergoes a state of purification before entering heaven called purgatory.

So how did Nicholas become associated with this doctrine?

During his life, Nicholas is said to have received visions, including images of Purgatory, which friends ascribed to his lengthy fasts. Prayer for the souls in Purgatory was the outstanding characteristic of his spirituality. Because of this Nicholas was proclaimed patron of the souls in Purgatory, in 1884 by Leo XIII.

As the Midwest Augustinians tell it, Nicholas was asleep in bed one night when he heard the voice of a deceased friar he had known. The friar told Nicholas that he was in purgatory and urged him to celebrate the Eucharist for him and other souls there, so that they would be set free by the power of Christ. After Nicholas did so for seven days, the friar again spoke to him, thanking him and assuring him that a large number of souls were now with God.

On his deathbed, to a brother who asked him what the reason for his contemplating gaze was, he replied: “I see the Lord my God, beside his most holy Mother and my father St Augustine”. His mortal remains are kept in the crypt of the basilica dedicated to him in Tolentino, with the Holy Arms in a separate chapel.