St. Phoebe the Deacon

I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is also a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the holy ones, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a benefactor to many and to me as well.

-Romans 16:1-2

The name “deacon” comes from the Greek work “diakonia”—one who waits at table—and may have existed as a secular activity before it was made an office in the Church. Yet, this was the term the Apostles chose when they wished to appoint delegates to carry out the practical duties which they did not have time to do. The first deacons, appointed in Acts of the Apostles, all represent Jews of the diaspora (i.e., “Greeks”) whose widows were not being treated fairly in the distribution of goods. But, while ministry to the poor has always been a crucial element of the diaconate, these administrators were also appointed to proclaim the gospel, to stand in the place of the Apostles, and, often, to give their lives in witness of Christ. Indeed, the first martyr identified in Scripture is the deacon Stephen, who is stoned to death for his witness to Christ and whose feast is celebrated the day after Christmas every year.

While presbyters (i.e., priests) were, in the early days of the Church, primarily councilors to the bishop, becoming what we know today only as the administrative area of the bishop expanded beyond his ability to serve on his own, deacons were the hands and feet of the bishop, often acting on their own authority in the gathering of alms, the distribution to the poor, and the basic instruction of the faithful. Likewise, deacons often played a liturgical role, assisting at the altar and, perhaps most significantly, baptizing converts in an external baptistry, and then bringing them to the bishop where they would be “chrismated”—i.e., confirmed—and received by the community. In these rites, both male and female deacons would perform the baptism, since those to go into the waters would be separated for the actual rite, when they would go naked into the waters of the font, and be dressed in their baptismal garment only after having arisen from the pool. 

Voices of the poor and martyrs of the early Church, the Scriptural portrayal of deacons and the writings of the early leaders of the Church testifies to their work in spreading the gospel and supporting the early Christian community. Only later, as the priesthood received increasing responsibility, previously reserved to the bishop, to administer sacraments, to preach, and to lead communities, does the authority of the deacon dissipate, becoming increasingly limited to ceremonial and liturgical tasks. In the end, subsumed under the priesthood, the diaconate becomes merely one of the transitional steps towards “full” ordination as a priest—thus, insuring that women, who could not be ordained as priests would also not be admitted as deacons. In this context, the permanent diaconate disappears, returning only in the period of reform following the Second Vatican Council.

Although Vatican II says little about the diaconate, per se, its emphasis on the episcopacy rather than the presbyterate as the reference point of orders (the Council of Trent had seen priesthood as central, and the office of bishop as merely a function of priesthood), returns to a more ancient understanding of the Church and becomes the starting point for the reemergence of the permanent diaconate. Yet, even as this apparent return-to-origins takes root in the Church, the medieval theology of orders, built on the all-male priesthood, presents a problem to the full return of the diaconate, as it was known in the early Church. Caught by the medieval understanding of all orders as derivative of priesthood, only men can be ordained—in any level; therefore, the historic evidence of women deacons must be either discarded as analogical language (i.e., they were “like” deacons, but not ordained) or seen as overshadowed by the “tradition” of the Church (meaning, to many, the medieval tradition). 

In movements like Discerning Deacons, which advocates for the return of women to their properly historic role in the ministry of the Church, the figure of St. Phoebe the Deacon is an irreducible fact, that should not be overlooked by the Church. Recommended by Paul—hardly a voice of radical feminism—and celebrated for centuries in the calendar of the universal Church, the life of Phoebe challenges the fractious and ahistorical stance of those who believe that the Church has always been as they imagine it to be. While her prayer, still rising in the presence of God, calls us to have faith that we may yet become the Church she served, where love overcomes fear, and all are welcome at the table.