Deaconesses
Deaconesses
The service of deaconesses began from the Apostolic era.
And the first deaconess whose name was mentioned in the Holy Bible is Phoebe, the deaconess of the church of Cenchrea [Romans 16:1], one of the disciples of Saint Paul the Apostle, and she was the one who carried his epistle to Rome. The saint praised her and commended her [Romans 16:2].
The work of the deaconesses was summarized in:
- Assisting in the baptism of elderly women, as mentioned in the Didascalia (4:15).
- Visiting women in their homes, and concerning this the Didascalia says to the bishop: “And appoint the woman deaconess, and she must be faithful and pure, for the service of women, because you cannot send a deacon into the houses to women, so you send a woman deaconess, because of the thoughts of evil people”.
- Serving sick and poor women as mentioned in the Didascalia (14:7).
- Organizing the women in the church and seating them in their place in the church, especially the foreign women “coming from outside, whether poor or rich” (Didascalia 10:49).
- Teaching the female catechumens.
- The deaconesses also worked as a general line of communication between the clergy and women. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 286.
The Confusion Between the Work of Deaconesses and Widows:
Some books of church canons, especially among our Greek Orthodox brethren, confuse the work of deaconesses and widows to the extent of making them one work for one person… Thus they apply to the deaconesses what was mentioned in the epistles of Saint Paul concerning widows… especially what was mentioned in [1 Timothy 5:3–16].
And if we follow this opinion, and the law of the widow applies to the deaconess, then the age of the deaconess would not be less than sixty, and this is unreasonable. And we do not think that Saint Phoebe, with all her activity, was above sixty!
Therefore, the Greek canons reduced the age from 60 to 50 to 40.
But the Didascalia is satisfied with moral qualifications, that the deaconesses be “pious, modest, reverent, not desiring to usurp authority” (12:44).
And our teacher Paul the Apostle requires of them that they be “reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things” [1 Timothy 3:11]. In reality, the Didascalia distinguishes between widows and deaconesses in more than one place as in (14:7), and even says that the widows should be subject to the women deaconesses (12:44).
However, there were widows who were accepted as deaconesses when they reached the age of sixty, as in Canon 24 of Saint Basil.
Likewise, there were virgin deaconesses who had vowed virginity, and naturally they were not widows.
In any case, there is no objection to the deaconess being of mature age.
The service of deaconesses continued for centuries.
And it was said that it disappeared in the eleventh century, as a result of the deaconesses exceeding their responsibilities.
Then this service returned in the Protestant churches in Germany beginning in the year 1836.
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