Philip Up!

IC XC
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NI KA

I WAS TODAY YEARS OLD WHEN I learned that today’s Byzantine Catholic feast of St Philip the Apostle (one of the 12) had nothing to do with the guy that helped the Ethiopian Eunuch get baptized – that’s St Philip the Evangelist, one of the 70, who is celebrated on October 11. I have not been helped by the lectionary which insists on giving us the passage (Acts 8:26-40) standing on its own in the Revised Common Lectionary (Protestant), the Novus Ordo, the TLM, and in the Byzantine Rite as well. I’ve always heard this as being related to Philip the Apostle. I was not helped by the OCA website for today. The tropar begins, “The universe is well adorned and Ethiopia exults, as though graced with a crown;” Clearly I’m not the only one who mixed up these two Philips.

This is important to me today because Philip the Evangelist is also Philip the Deacon! He is commemorated on 11 October, as I mentioned. And the full context in Acts begins in Chapter 6. There there is a problem with getting food shared out and to resolve this, the First Bishops of the Church (the 12 Apostles) create the First Deacons of the Church.

Following the Ordination of the Seven there is the story of the First Martyr – St Stephen the Deacon: he is killed for preaching the Gospel. Then there is the story of St Philip the Evangelist, opening the scriptures to the Ethiopian Eunuch. Thus we see the three main functions of the Diaconate: to assist the Church in the performance of works of mercy, to proclaim the Gospel by preaching and teaching, and when needed, to die for the Truth. All of these functions are still in the Church today.

Anyway, I was today years old when I learned this. And I feel rather closer to the Ethiopian, one of the first Gentile Converts to the faith, who was evangelized by a Deacon going to the margins and finding those on the outside.

Amen.

Deacons come before presbyters, let’s be clear: Bishops, then Deacons, and then – much later, when they were needed – presbyters. The first Deacons are ordained to help the High Priests – they function in the Early Church as a class of Levites to the Apostolic Kohens. Even today, in both the East and West, there are liturgical mentions of Deacons as “Levites”. One very clear one is on Easter when the Deacon, singing the Exsultet, invites the congregation to “invoke with me, I ask you, the mercy of God almighty, that he, who has been pleased to number me, though unworthy, among the Levites…”