. . . Timothy, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon/So goes the song I learned at age six or seven to memorize the New Testament for Sunday School class.
To the Hebrews/
The Epistle of James/
Peter, Peter, John, John, John, Jude, Revelation/
These are the books of the New Testament
Today the Church collectively remembers Timothy and Titus. Both men were in the second generation of Church leadership. Both men were companions of the apostle Paul. It was Paul, who, by his apostolic authority (an authority received from Jesus Christ), installed Titus as bishop in Crete and placed Timothy at the head of the Church in Ephesus.
Whether the first reading selected is from 2 Timothy or from Titus (we went with Titus because we don’t often read from this book either in the Sunday or weekday lectionary- though it is the- usually ignored- “epistle” reading for Christmas Mass During the Night), Paul starts by identifying himself as an “Apostle of Jesus Christ” or “an Apostle of Christ Jesus.”1
Timothy & Titus are not apostles. Rather, they were the immediate successors of an apostle. As Successors of the Apostles, bishops today exercise this same authority, which is the authority of Christ. Apostolic succession is indispensable to what it means to confess the Church as “apostolic.” Based on a close an accurate reading of our uniquely Christian scriptures- the New Testament- the Catholic Church understands itself to have a divine constitution. Her constitution is hierarchical.
Far from being a pejorative term, the word "hierarchy" in Christian theology, points to the Church’s divine constitution. Taken from Greek, hierarchy refers to a sacred ordering. Sacramentally, there is no higher office in the Church than that of bishop.
Pope Leo is the Pope by virtue of his being the Bishop of Rome, which makes him the Successor of Saint Peter. Note that the Bishop of Rome is not an archbishop. Like a Cardinal, an archbishop, who has some jurisdiction over a metropolitan area- the Diocese of Salt Lake City, along with the Diocese of Reno, is part of the Archdiocese of Las Vegas- is not part of the Church’s divine constitution but represents a legitimate development.
Saint Paul Consigns his letters, Mosaic, Cathedral of Monreale, Palermo, Sicily
Saint Paul starts his Letter to Titus not by asserting his apostleship, which was frequently challenged, given the highly unique circumstances of his call, but by calling himself “a slave of God.”2 A diakonos is a servant, a minister. In Greek, a slave is doulos. Paul calls himself a doulos of God, not only a servant. This is the essence of apostolic ministry.
If you’ve ever spent appreciable time with a bishop, you know that he is not his own. His life, his duties, his responsibilities, the pastoral nature of his call are all-consuming. It is no exaggeration to point out that a bishop frequently puts in 14–15-hour days six and sometimes seven times per week. In his apostolic ministry, Saint Paul set this pace early on.
In terms of our Gospel, it is episcopal ministry that prevents the Lord’s house from being plundered. Again, this pattern is set early on in the Church. While it certainly develops over time, it is substantially complete before the end of the first century. We see this in Paul’s exhortation to Titus, after being set over the Church in Crete. He exhorts Titus to appoint presbyters, that is, priests in each town throughout what we would now call his diocese. Only a bishop can ordain.
Every diocesan priest and deacon, along with all religious or extern clergy who are granted faculties by the bishop, obtain their authority from the bishop’s apostolic authority. Our job is to extend the bishop’s ministry. Episcopal ministry has a threefold munera: to teach, to govern, and to sanctify.
As mentioned earlier, apostolic succession is a necessary but insufficient criterion of the Church’s apostolicity. An apostle is one who is sent. Mass, in Latin (and Latin-based languages, like Spanish) is Missa. Missa refers to both the verb of being sent and the noun of what we are sent to do: engage in mission. The mission of the Church is to evangelize. Apart from our mission, apostolic authority is just a kind of cool historical phenomenon.
Evangelization is not a program, a canned and repeatable set of words and actions that can produce reliable results at a predictable rate. To evangelize is to tell others what Jesus Christ has done for you, to let them know what a difference knowing Christ makes for your life.
1 See 2 Timothy 1:1 and Titus 1:1.↩
2 Titus 1:1.↩
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