The Order of the Church

For the young Churches to stand after the departure of their founders, they need stable and proven leaders. Paul fixes the conditions for them and entrusts to Timothy and Titus the task of establishing them.

Proven ministers

The one who presides over the community, whom Paul calls the overseer, must first be a man whose life gives no hold to reproach: “The overseer, then, must be beyond reproach, the husband of one wife, sober, level-headed, courteous, hospitable, able to teach.” 1 Timothy 3:2 Beside him, deacons serve the community, chosen with the same care. The phrase “husband of one wife” asks for a man of one marriage: it sets aside the one who has remarried, without requiring that he be married. The first communities often chose their leaders from among mature men, proven in their household; the discipline of priestly celibacy took shape later in the Latin Church. It is not striking gifts that make a minister, but the uprightness of his life and his ability to teach soundly.

To ordain elders

This charge is handed on by an institution. This institution has a precise gesture: the laying on of hands. Timothy holds his charge from a gift received in this way. “Do not neglect the gift of grace that is in you, the one given to you through a prophetic word, when the council of elders laid their hands on you.” 1 Timothy 4:14 Paul reminds him of that same gift, received “through the laying on of my hands.” 2 Timothy 1:6 This gesture, handed on from age to age, is the matter of the sacrament of Orders and the bond of the apostolic succession. Paul reminds Titus of the mission he left him in Crete: “that you might finish setting everything in order and appoint elders in every town, according to my instructions.” Titus 1:5 The Greek word for these elders, presbyteroi, gave our word priest; here is one of the foundations of the ordained priesthood and of the ministerial structure of the Church. Here appear the degrees the Church will distinguish: the bishop (the overseer), the presbyter (the elder), and the deacon. At the origins, overseer and elder still overlap; it is a little later, with Ignatius of Antioch, that the single bishop stands out clearly from the priests and deacons around him.

The mystery of godliness

All this order has a single aim, to guard and hand on the faith. And this faith Paul gathers into a brief hymn, one of the oldest Christian professions, which embraces the whole work of Christ, from his entry into the flesh to his raising into glory: “great is the mystery of godliness: he was revealed in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by the angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory.” 1 Timothy 3:16