Family Communion for St Nicholas's Day: celebrant the Revd Tola Badejo.

First reading: Philippians 1. 3–11
Gospel: Luke 3. 1–6

St Nicholas's Day falls on 6 December, and is celebrated at the church on the nearest Sunday. While the readings are those for the Second Sunday of Advent, they correspond closely with what we know of the historical Nicholas, Bishop of Myra: like St Paul and John the Baptist, he was uncompromising in his dedication to the faith and fully prepared to accept any consequences that fell upon him.

Luke goes out of his way to set the story of John the Baptist in a precise historical context. His intention is to show that the Christian story relates to the world as we know it, and needs to be rooted in reality. The same aspiration is reflected in the actions traditionally attributed to Nicholas, in which he engages with the darkest sides of his own society: in the painting above by Bicci di Lorenzo he is shown throwing gold through a family's window so that the young women inside can make respectable marriages rather than be forced into prostitution to survive themselves and to support the aged father for whom they are caring. Unusually, Nicholas is shown here as a young, athletic man rather than the bearded patriarch of more conventional images.