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At times God desires that the design for sanctity in a soul be etched early in life. Born in 1245, in Sant' Angelo, a town in the Italian Marches, a province east of the Central Appennines, Nicholas was the answer to the prayers of his middle-aged parents. He displayed a desire for prayer and solitude at an early age, and at seven began various practices of penance and mortification. He was tutored by a local priest and made rapid and gifted progress, which brought him to the attention of the bishop of Fermo.
While still a boy, Nicholas received minor orders. Refusing a career in the secular clergy, he desired a way of life in which he could consecrate himself completely to God. He chose the order of Hermits of Saint Augustine after hearing one of the friars preach, and made his profession before he was eighteen. He was sent to San Ginesio for his theological studies and while there was given the charge of distributing food to the poor at the gate of the monastery. So great was his generosity with the food of the house that the procurator complained and reported him to the prior. It was here, too, that Nicholas performed the first of his many miracles by placing his hand on the head of a sick child who had come to the gate. Nicholas said, "The good God will heal you," and the child was cured. Nicholas was ordained about 1270 and during his first Mass was rapt in ecstasy. From this time on, he had the gift of conversions through his sermons and his instructions in the confessional.
While visiting a relative who was the abbot of a monastery near Fermo, Nicholas was invited to give up the hard life he had chosen and stay at this more comfortable monastery, but while he was praying in the church, he seemed to hear a voice saying, "To Tolentino, to Tolentino. Persevere there."
And so Nicholas went to Tolentino. Tolentino at this time was still suffering from the Guelf and Ghibelline struggle, and the weakening of religious faith that resulted from war and heresy. A campaign of street preaching was necessary to revitalize Tolentino, and Nicholas was put to this work, making a great success of it. Even those who tried to drown out his voice and disband the crowds that gathered to listen to him finally stayed to hear him and to repent their own sins. Nicholas also worked in the slums of Tolentino, comforting and caring for the sick and appealing to sinners. Miracles always accompanied this work.
Less public than this apostolate to the sinners and to the suffering were the practices of penance and the long hours of prayer that were the source both of his success and of his sanctity. Always exceptionally faithful to the community office in the monastery church, he added many more hours of prayer both day and night, in the church and in his own cold cell. Only humble obedience to his superiors kept him from the strict fasts and harsh self-denial that threatened to make him an invalid.
Nicholas died in 1305, and the miracles that followed were so numerous that the case for his canonization was immediately drawn up. The grave difficulties of the Holy See that resulted from the transfer of the papacy to Avignon delayed any action on his cause until 1446, when he was canonized by Pope Eugenius IV.
Source: Welcome to the Catholic Church 3.0 by Harmony Media, Inc., PO Box 9179, Salem, OR 97305 USA.
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