saint
Apostle Timothy of the Seventy
First bishop of Ephesus among the Seventy Apostles who, as the great festival of Artemis was underway, preached Christ in the streets and was stoned to death by the crowd; his feast is kept distinct from the Timothy who is Paul's co-author.
Life
Timothy was born around 17 AD at Lystra in Lycaonia, the son of a Greek father and a Jewish Christian mother named Eunice; his grandmother Lois had also embraced the faith. He came to the notice of the Apostle Paul on Paul's second missionary journey through Lycaonia, was circumcised by Paul for the sake of the Jewish converts of the region (Acts 16:3), and joined Paul as one of his closest fellow-laborers from that point on. The Pauline epistles to Timothy — together with his name appearing as co-sender in several others — testify to the intimacy of their bond.
He was eventually consecrated bishop of Ephesus, where he served for fifteen years and where Paul addressed to him the two pastoral letters that bear his name. The Lord appeared to him on his deathbed, by the older tradition, though his actual death was a martyrdom: the synaxarion records that he was killed by a mob of pagans during one of the great festivals of Artemis in the city, having rebuked them at the head of the procession through the marketplace. He was beaten to death with clubs around 96 AD, in his late seventies.
He is commemorated on January 22 along with the Persian martyr Anastasius — a former Persian magus, a convert and a monk at Jerusalem, beheaded under Khosrau II in 628 after long torments at Caesarea in Palestine.
Traditions
Feast day
January 22
Topics
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