By Veronica A. Arntz
“I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. Great, indeed, we confess, is the mystery of your religion” (1 Timothy 3:14-16, RSV-CE).
These verses of St. Paul, in
addition to the previous passages, reveal very succinctly the nature and soul
of the Church. Paul first outlines the different roles within the Body of
Christ—men and women, bishops, and deacons—and then describes the source of the
Church’s unity, namely, the Incarnate Word of God. Reflecting on these passages
of Paul, with the trustworthy guide of St. Thomas Aquinas, will shed light on
how we should respond to the current situation in our Church. The Church today
is indeed in need of a reminder of how she should act as the “household of
God,” given how easily we fall into sin, which divides the Church and prevents
her from being truly unified as the Body of Christ.
In this letter, St. Paul first
talks about men and women, or the laity, in the Church. St. Paul writes, “I
desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without
anger or quarrelling” (1 Tim 2:8). St. Paul thus desires that all the men
should pray, and this prayer, according to Thomas, is marked by three
characteristics: “that it be assiduous, pure, and quiet” (71). Mental prayer
can occur anywhere, which is why men are no longer required to pray only in
Jerusalem. Moreover, the prayer ought to be pure, which means that by our
external signs, we are giving glory to God.
As Thomas explains, “For genuflections
and the like are not of themselves pleasing to God, but only because by them,
as by signs of humility, a man is internally humble” (72). Man’s actions in
prayer are a sign of his humility and thereby purity before God. Finally,
prayer should be quiet, or without anger, both toward God and toward neighbor;
thus, real prayer is guided by charity. A man cannot truly pray unless he
deeply possesses the virtue of charity, which is expressed in the twofold
commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. Thus, we can see from the
beginning that, for Paul, prayer is at the center of the Church. The Church
must pray to God in humility, begging for his grace and his mercy to transcend
our weak human nature.
Paul has a lot more to say about
women than he does about men, although we should note that all members of the
Church should devote themselves to prayer. Essentially, women are to be modest
in the dress and adorn themselves with good deeds, not with decorations (1 Tim
2:9-10). Furthermore, “Let a woman listen in silence with all submissiveness. I
permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.…Yet
woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and
love and holiness with modesty” (1 Tim 2:11-12, 15).
These words would certainly
offend any feminist, and Thomas’s commentary would not help matters, especially
when he says that St. Paul writes these things because women are weak in reason
(75, 79). Yet, perhaps in considering these texts, we should look beyond our
modern notions of the relationship between men and women, and consider the
Blessed Mother in light of these verses from St. Paul.
The Blessed Mother assuredly
spent time in silence; many paintings of the Annunciation depict her sitting
silently, contemplating the Word of God, when the angel appeared to her. She
was submissive to the Word of God; she accepted God’s plan for her without
question. While the Blessed Mother did ask Jesus to perform a miracle at the
Wedding at Cana, she did so with the full knowledge that His time of suffering
would begin.
Furthermore, even though Mary
conceived our Lord through the Holy Spirit, and not through natural human
relations, she did carry Him in her womb, gave birth to Him and cared for Him. In this way, we can understand that St. Paul has a high
calling for women: They are meant to imitate the Blessed Mother in their lives,
through silence and submissiveness to the will of God and to their husbands
(Ephesians 5:22).
This certainly does not demean
women, but rather, gives them a very noble place within the life of the Church: The woman is meant to be the model of modesty, like the Blessed Mother, and be
not only a physical mother (if that is in Divine Providence) but also a
spiritual mother to all she encounters. Indeed, Paul’s comments can also apply
to women in consecrated life: They have given their lives entirely to God and
to the service of the Church. Like Mary in the Gospel, they sit at the feet of
Jesus, contemplating His face in silence through their daily participation in
the liturgy.
One final thought on Paul’s
presentation of women: The Blessed Virgin Mary would never take or seize any
position of authority. In the story of the Annunciation, and the little pieces
from Scripture that we know about her life, we see that Mary always received
what she was given by God. Moreover, she “kept all these things in her heart”
(Luke 2:51). Mary received the Word of God, and she contemplated Him within her
heart. For women living today, Mary can especially serve as a model of
reception and contemplation, rather than reaching and seizing for positions of
authority, especially in the sacred liturgy. Many feminists want to take up
positions of authority in the liturgy, to “feel involved,” when in reality, the
greatest involvement is through silent participation and assisting, while the
priests and men fulfill their roles in celebrating and assisting at the altar.
St. Paul then discusses the
bishops. He writes, “The saying is sure: If any one aspires to the office of
bishop, he desires a noble task” (1 Tim 3:1). As Thomas comments, “Two things
must be considered in the bishop, namely, his higher office and his beneficial
actions for the faithful. For some are perhaps attracted by the circumstances
of his office, namely, that he receives honor and has power. One who desires
the episcopate for those reasons does not know what a bishop is” (88). A
priest, therefore, should not desire to become a bishop because of power; he
does not understand what it means to be a bishop, which is to be the guardian
of his church.
The bishop is to be a man of
virtue, who is “above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible,
dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, no drunkard, not violent but gentle, not
quarrelsome, and no lover of money” (1 Tim 3:2-3). This calling is indeed
noble, and he who desires the office simply for pride would be incapable of
fulfilling the vocation. While it may sound strange to us that the bishop
should have a wife, the principle is clear: The bishop is meant to be virtuous,
and if he is to have a wife, then the marriage should reflect “the union
between Christ and the Church: There is one spouse, Christ, and one Church: one is my dove (Song 6:8)” (96).
In a word, the bishop must be
faithful to one wife, and in a certain sense, we can say that he is meant to be
faithful to his one Bride, the Church, since he himself is another Christ while
on earth. We should note that Paul is writing in apostolic context, which is
why a bishop is allowed to have a wife. Shortly afterwards, however, it became
normative for all bishops to be celibate, since they were married to the
Church, as their one “wife.” In the West, this is the norm that extends to all
priests as well. Furthermore, as Thomas writes, “the bishop is expected to feed
his sheep” (101). This feeding comes under two forms: spiritual and corporeal.
The bishop is supposed to give both spiritual and physical nourishment to his
people, since he is the shepherd of his flock.
Finally, St. Paul talks of the
deacons, who have a similar high calling to the bishops. As he writes, “Deacons
likewise must be serious, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not
greedy for gain; they must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear
conscience” (1 Tim 3:8-9). As Thomas writes, “I say that bishops are obliged to
be chaste; and the same applies to
deacons, because the contrary makes one unfit for spiritual tasks, for it turns
the spirit away from spiritual things, whereas it is necessary that the spirit
be elevated for the performance of such tasks” (110).
The deacons, then, just like the
bishops, are meant to live chastely, for their own spiritual good and for the
spiritual good of the people. They are also meant to live virtuously, having
knowledge of the mystery of the faith and a clear conscience. The deacons are
not only called to have faith, but also an understanding of what is hidden
beneath the faith, that is, the mystery of the faith (113). Moreover, they are
called to a pure conscience, “because an impure one makes one err in matters of
faith” (113). Paul further says that they must be proved first (1 Tim 3:10),
meaning that they must be without mortal sin (114). The deacons must be models
of virtue for the people in the Church, because they are ministers of Christ.
Men, women, bishops and deacons
are the ones who comprise the Church. But the Church, according to St. Paul, is
not merely a human institution; it is not merely an organization of human
members. Rather, it is the “household of God, which is the Church of the living
God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:14). These words are indeed
timely for today, in a world that does not trust in the truth of the Church,
but rather, their own understanding.
Thomas writes that the Church is
of the living God, because it is the assembly of believers, who are assembled
for God (127). Unlike the pagans, the Christians gather together to worship the
True God. Furthermore, the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth,
because there is firm knowledge of the truth in the Church, and because the
people cannot be grounded in the truth without the sacraments of the Church
(128). This beautiful ecclesiological vision is essential for today’s world, in
which the Church is often viewed as simply an institution that holds onto
outdated dogmas and doctrines, that are no longer true or applicable today.
This understanding could not be further from reality: The Church is the means
by which man learns truth and remains grounded in that truth through the
sacraments, which are given to her by Christ Himself.
What is the source of this truth
in the Church? Here we come to the very center of the Church of the living God.
As St. Paul writes, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion:
He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels,
preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (1 Tim
3:16). Thomas writes that a mystery, or a sacrament, is the same as a sacred
sign, but that which we keep in our hearts is most secret. Thus, what God keeps
in His heart is both secret and holy (130).
Thomas cites several Scripture
passages to support this, including “My secret to myself” (Isa 24:16), and
“Verily you art a hidden God” (Isa 45:15). Furthermore, he writes, “And this is
the word of God in the Father’s heart: my
heart has uttered a good word (Ps 44:2)” (130). What, then, is the secret
of God’s heart, the mystery of God’s heart? Thomas, who almost waxes poetic,
“This secret which was locked in God’s heart was made man” (130). Christ
Incarnate is the secret of God’s heart, but He did not simply remain in His
heart. Rather, He was sent forth to the nations, and to those who would become His
Church, to redeem them from their sins and grant them the possibility of
salvation.
At the heart of the Church,
therefore, is the Word of God, Who is present in her sacraments and her
liturgies, and most especially, in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The
Incarnate Word must be the source of love for the members of the Church—men,
women, bishops, and deacons. Without the Incarnate Word, these individual
members could not fulfill their vocations and could not compose the one Body of
Christ.
How do these reflections on the
Church in 1 Timothy relate to the Church in the modern world? We, in the modern
Church, must be reminded of the source of the mystery of the Church, namely,
the Incarnation of God. We concern ourselves too readily with gossip and
intrigue; we are sometimes more concerned about “Church politics” than with
pursuing our vocations and the call to holiness within the life of the Church.
Do we take seriously our vocations in the Church, and do we ponder the mystery
of our religion often enough?
Let St. Paul’s words, coupled
with the commentary of Thomas, be a reminder to us that the real mystery of the
Church is the Incarnate Word: We must put all our attention on Him, so that we
are able to instruct others and preach the Word of God, in accordance with our
state in life. For great indeed is the mystery of our religion, that is, the
mystery of God made Man. Let us never lose sight of that mystery by becoming
too focused on worldly concerns; let us rather turn our attention to the Word
made flesh (John 1:14).
