Saints Timothy and Titus

Saints Timothy and Titus were disciples and the closest co-workers of Saint Paul the Apostle. According to tradition, Timothy led the Church in Ephesus and Titus the Church on Crete. Three letters of the New Testament, known as the Pastoral Letters, are addressed to them. The Church commemorates them together on January 26.

Timothy came from Lystra in Asia Minor. His father was a pagan, and his mother a Jewish woman who had come to believe in Christ. The Second Letter to Timothy preserves the names of his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois, and recalls that he had known the sacred Scriptures from childhood. When Paul passed through Lystra at the beginning of his second missionary journey, he chose him as a companion, because the brothers spoke well of him.

From then on Timothy shared the labors of the Apostle, who sent him wherever young communities needed strengthening: to Thessalonica, to Macedonia, and to Corinth. Paul called him his beloved and faithful son in the Lord, and wrote to the Philippians that he had no one else who would care so genuinely for their welfare. He charged him to remain in Ephesus to watch over the teaching. The Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea records that Timothy was the first bishop of that city.

Titus was a Greek, a pagan by birth. Paul took him to Jerusalem for the so-called Apostolic Council, at which it was recognized that pagans who accepted the Gospel were not bound by the Law of Moses. When the community in Corinth fell into conflict with the Apostle, Titus went there as his envoy and restored peace. Afterward he led the collection in Corinth for the Christians of Jerusalem. Paul called him his partner and co-worker and his true child in a common faith.

The Letter to Titus says that the Apostle left him on Crete to set in order the life of the Church there and to appoint presbyters in every town. Paul later summoned him to Nicopolis in Epirus, and the Second Letter to Timothy mentions his departure for Dalmatia. The Pastoral Letters, which tradition attributes to Saint Paul, instruct both disciples how to guard the faith and how to care for the communities entrusted to them.

The New Testament says nothing about the end of their lives. We do not know the years of their birth or death. A later tradition tells that Timothy, as an old man, was beaten to death by pagans in Ephesus, and that Titus lived to a great age on Crete. Some of Saint Timothy’s relics, brought from Constantinople, have been kept since 1239 in the cathedral of Termoli in Italy.

Both have been venerated as saints since antiquity, without a formal canonization. In the past they were commemorated separately. The Roman calendar renewed after the Second Vatican Council joined them in a single obligatory memorial and, since the days of their deaths are not known, set it on the day after the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. Benedict XVI said that Timothy and Titus teach us to serve the Gospel with generosity, aware that this is also a service to the Church.