St. Timothy

Who they were

Timothy was half Greek, raised in the faith by his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois, whom Paul names by name, which means a grandmother's catechesis made a bishop. He joined Paul as a young co worker and received two of the letters that bear his name.

Every hint in those letters describes the same person: young, loyal, physically frail, and anxious about the size of his assignment. Paul's counsel to him is what gives the correspondence its warmth. Let no one despise your youth. Stir up the gift that is in you. And the most human verse in the epistles, to take a little wine for his stomach and his frequent ailments, which made Timothy the ancient patron of stomach trouble, an attribution worth carrying with a smile. Tradition has him dying bishop of Ephesus, the church he was sent to and stayed with. The Church keeps his feast with Titus the day after Paul's Conversion, because the two of them are that conversion's harvest.

Why people turn to St. Timothy

Every young person handed a role that feels too big, and every mentor deciding whether to hand it over. Grandmothers who catechize get their verse here.

How to ask their intercession

For the young leader by name, with Paul's sentence: let no one despise their youth, including themselves.