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The Romans, especially the Romans of the Eastern Empire centered in Constantinople, the great city of our Muslim brothers and sisters in Turkey, now referred to as Istanbul, loved giving their leaders nicknames.
I am friends with a few of today's Turks, and -- believe me -- they are still like this.
The strangest nickname of all was given to one of the successors to the Chair of Peter, Fabian the Manure Shoveler, who was the Pope of God's Church from 236 to 250 A.D.
As soldiers of the Roman army watched in shock and awe at the astonishing courage of the Christians whom they arrested and murdered for the Roman emperors, they slowly-but-surely underwent conversion, themselves, and spread the new Faith throughout the Empire, as foreshadowed at the foot of the cross when they divided the clothing of crucified Christ among themselves. Matthew 27:35.
As the Faith spread from household to household, mostly by this means, servants in many of the households of Rome joined the anawim in God's Church.
One of them was Fabian, whose Roman master dispatched him to purchase a wagon load of manure for his garden in 236 A.D.
It so happened that as Fabian made his purchase, and backed up his master's wagon up to the manure piles and began shoveling a nice ripe load of manure into his master's wagon, the Christians of Rome were down the street gathering to elect a successor to Pope Anterus, who had just passed away.
While the faith of God's people was ardent, it took a special man to accept being elected to the Chair of Peter. Over the decades, accepting one's election to the Chair of Peter pretty much amounted to a self-imposed death sentence.
And so, as Fabian shoveled one steaming scoop of manure after another into his master's wagon, the Faithful gathered a few blocks away prayed devoutly for guidance from the Holy Spirit respecting the identity of their new leader.
As they did so, a white dove perched on one of the nearby rooftops above their heads took to air, and in full view of the crowd, who could not help but notice the dove -- already a symbol of the Holy Spirit among the faithful -- flew over their heads and down the street, and gently alighted upon the head of Fabian.
Very deeply impressed by the incident, the crowd rushed down the street, grabbed poor Fabian, and hoisted him onto their shoulders, celebrating him as the choice of God the Holy Spirit.
And what did Fabian say? How did he respond?
He said, "Accipio" -- "I accept."
And so the early Church elected one of its more successful early administrators, Fabian the Manure Shoveler, as Pope.
