The strong man who nearly drowned carrying one small child

THE RIVER, about 240 AD — According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, Saint Christopher was a very tall man, and frightening to look at. He slept in a hut he had built on the bank of a river. The river had no bridge across it and no boat on it, and travellers drowned in it. His work was carrying them over. He waded across on foot, with the traveller sitting up on his shoulders. He had cut himself a great pole to lean on in the water.

Looking for the strongest master in the world

Years earlier, St. Christopher decided he would serve nobody but the strongest and bravest man alive. He left the king of Canaan to go and find him. He found a king everyone said was the greatest there was, and went to work for him.

But that king was a Christian. Whenever anyone named the devil, he made the sign of the cross on his face, because he was afraid the devil would get power over him. A king afraid of the devil was not the strongest master alive. So St. Christopher went looking for the devil instead.

He found him, and took him for his master. Then the two of them came to a road with a cross standing beside it, and the devil turned off to get past it by rough ground. St. Christopher asked why. The devil said he was afraid of the cross, because a man called Christ had been hanged on one: “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.” St. Christopher left the devil standing there and went to look for Christ.

At last he came to a hermit who lived alone in a great desert, and the hermit taught him the faith. He had been called Reprobus all his life, and at his baptism he was given the name Christopher.

Then the hermit told him what serving this new master would cost. He would have to go without food often, and St. Christopher said he could not do that. He would have to stay awake at night to pray and say a great many prayers, and he told the hermit he did not know what that was. But he was tall and strong, the hermit said. So he was to live beside the river where many people 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.”

The night the voice woke him

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

He lifted the Child onto his shoulders, took up his pole and stepped in. The river started to rise as soon as he was in it, and it kept rising the farther out he went. The Child on his shoulders was as heavy as lead, and got heavier with every single step.

It was a stormy night, and halfway over he felt his strength going. By the middle of the water the weight hurt more than he could bear. He was afraid he was going to 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. He was Jesus Christ. “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 push the pole into the ground beside his hut. By morning, he said, it would have flowers and fruit growing on it. Then he was gone. St. Christopher planted the pole and went to sleep. In the morning it was a palm tree, in flower and in leaf, with dates growing on it.