St. Christopher carries a child across the river and nearly drowns

THE RIVER, about 240 AD — According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, Saint Christopher carried a small child over a river one night under a weight that almost stopped him midstream, and was told on the far bank that he had been carrying the one who made the world. The Child said he was Jesus Christ. St. Christopher had left a king, and then the devil, to go looking for him.

He was a Canaanite of great height and frightening appearance. His work was carrying people over a river that had no bridge and no boat, and in which travellers drowned. He waded it on foot, with the traveller up on his shoulders.

Years earlier, when his size and strength came on him, he had resolved to serve nobody but the strongest and bravest man alive, and he left the king of Canaan to go and find that man. He was taken into the court of a king everyone said was the greatest there was. Then a minstrel sang a song in front of that king that kept naming the devil, and the king, who was a Christian, made the sign of the cross on his face every time the name came up. Pressed for a reason, the king said he was afraid the devil would otherwise get power over him. Tradition keeps what St. Christopher said to him before he went: “I had supposed I had found the most mighty and the most greatest Lord of the world, but I commend thee to God, for I will go seek him for to be my Lord, and I his servant.”

So he went looking for the devil. In a great desert he fell in with a company of knights, and one of them, cruel and horrible to look at, asked him where he was going. St. Christopher said he was looking for the devil to take service with him, and the knight answered that he was the devil. St. Christopher took him for his master and swore to serve him for good. Then the two of them came down a road with a cross standing beside it, and the devil turned off and led him round by rough ground to get past the cross. St. Christopher demanded to know why. The devil told him: “There was a man called Christ which was hanged on the cross, and when I see his sign I am sore afraid, and flee from it wheresoever I see it.” So St. Christopher left him there and went to find Christ.

He searched a long time, and came at last to a hermit living alone in a great desert, who preached Christ to him and taught him the faith. He had been called Reprobus all his life, and at his baptism he was given the name Christopher. Reprobus is Latin for rejected; Christopher is Greek for Christ-bearer.

Then the hermit told him what the service of this new master would cost. It would mean frequent fasting, and St. Christopher said he could not do that. It would mean keeping vigil and saying many prayers, and he did not know what those were. He was tall and strong, the hermit said, so he was to live beside the river where many had drowned and carry over everyone who came to it. And there, the hermit said, he hoped Jesus Christ would show himself to him: “I hope he shall show himself to thee.”

He built a hut on the bank, cut a great pole to lean on in the water, and carried over everyone who came, day after day.

Then one night a voice woke him, a child calling him by name from the bank: “Christopher, come out and bear me over.” He went out and found nobody at the water. He lay down again, the voice called again, and again the bank was empty. The third time he came out there was a child standing at the edge of the water, asking to be carried over.

He lifted the Child onto his shoulders, took up the pole and stepped in. The river began to rise as soon as he was in it, and went on rising the farther out he went. The Child on his shoulders was heavy as lead, and grew heavier with every step he took. The night was stormy, and halfway over he felt his strength going. By midstream he was in agony and afraid he would drown. He got out on the far bank and set the Child down.

St. Christopher spoke first, and it was a complaint: “Child, thou hast put me in great peril; thou weighest almost as I had all the world upon me, I might bear no greater burden.”

The Child answered him by his name: “Christopher, marvel thee nothing, for thou hast not only borne all the world upon thee, but thou hast borne him that created and made all the world, upon thy shoulders. I am Jesu Christ the king, to whom thou servest in this work.”

The Child told him to plant the pole in the earth beside his hut, and said that by morning it would be bearing flowers and fruit. Then he was gone. St. Christopher planted it and went to sleep. In the morning it was a palm tree, in flower, in leaf, and carrying dates.