January 26: Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops
First Century
Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
Patron Saints of stomach disorders
Saint Paul could not do it alone
Today’s saints were two bishops from the apostolic period of the Church, those decades immediately following the death and resurrection of Our Lord. In this grace-filled time, the Apostles and Saint Paul were carving the first deep furrows into the pagan soil they traveled, planting in the earth the rich seeds of Christian faith which succeeding bishops would later water, tend, and harvest.
Little is certainly known about today’s saints apart from references to them in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of Saint Paul. But these numerous references are enough. The generations of theologians, bishops, martyrs, and saints who lived in the post-apostolic period give universal and consistent witness to the veracity of Paul’s letters and the events they recount. There are theological, more than historical, lessons to be taken from the lives and ministry of today’s saints.
Saints Timothy and Titus were apostles of an Apostle. They shared in the ministry of Saint Paul, who had a direct connection to Christ through a miraculous occurrence on the road to Damascus, a feast commemorated, not coincidentally, the day prior to today’s memorial. Timothy, Titus, and many others, known and unknown, carried out on a local level a priestly ministry which Paul engaged in on a more regional level. It was Saint Paul’s practice, and probably that of the other surviving Apostles, to appoint assistants wherever they went who acted with the authority of the Apostle who appointed them. These assistants were variously called priests or bishops, terms that were often interchangeable. Deacons, of course, shared in the priestly ministry too, but more as assistants to bishops.
A direct connection to an Apostle, either through his personal ministry or through a group or delegate he appointed (through an ordination rite), was fundamental to establishing a church. Accredited leaders were needed. This is a constant theme in the writings of Saint Paul. No Apostle—no Church. The body could not be separated from the head and still survive. In other words, the faithful proclamation of the Gospel always—always—occurred contemporaneously with the foundation of a solidly structured local Church. The modern tendency to emphasize the internal, personal, and spiritual message of Christ over the external, public, hierarchical Church which carries His message is a dichotomy unknown to early Christianity. For early Christians and faithful Christians still today, the Church carries a message and is itself a message. The content of the Gospel and the form of the Gospel community go hand in hand. The constant, amoeba-like splitting of Protestant communities attests to the inevitable divisions which result when the Church and its message are separated.
A later tradition holds that Saint Timothy was the first Bishop of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. Equally ancient traditions state that Saint John the Evangelist retreated to Ephesus before dying on the island of Patmos, and that Mary followed John to Ephesus, living in a house above the town. It is possible, then, that Saint Timothy drank from the deepest wells of the Christian tradition. Sitting around the warm glow of a fire at night, he may have heard about the life of Christ from the very lips of the most important witnesses—Mary and John. We can imagine that Timothy heard about many of the unwritten events of Christ’s life from Saint John. It is this same John who ends his Gospel by writing that “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25). Timothy and Titus were bearers of the very oldest Christian traditions.
Saints Timothy and Titus, through your lives dedicated to the missions, you helped lay the foundations of Christianity, and carried on the priestly ministry of Jesus by preaching, teaching, and governing His flock. Help us to be as bold now as you were then.
