Chapters 8 to 9 - Christ’s Teachings and Today’s Christianity

- 77 - assistance given to the truly needy of the congregation, and it was the presbyter who was in constant touch with the families of his congregation and who consulted with them about all their troubles of body and soul. He was everyone’s best friend. Everyone had unlimited confidence in him because he had been designated by God’s spirit messengers as the one who was to share their sorrows and joys and to whom they could confide everything. In consequence of his selection by the spirit world he also possessed the Divine gift of always giving them the best of advice and assistance. He found out who needed help, visited the sick and the lonely, the widows and orphans, and saw to it that they received the help they needed from the other Christian families. • It was the custom of the early Christians to bring to the meetings numerous gifts of the most varied nature and to entrust them to the elder in order that he might distribute them among the needy. • Since the elder also possessed the power of healing and was of great help to the sick, it naturally followed that he won the love and affection of his fellow Christians also on purely human grounds by virtue of his activities. Moreover, because of their great confidence in him, the members of the congregation confided their spiritual troubles to him, frequently also confessing their sins to him and asking for advice. He on his part would uplift, console, and encourage them, pray with them, and be in every way a spiritual guide and a true shepherd to all. The early Christian congregations were composed of groups of neighbours and formed by a given number of families living within a certain radius. They could not be very large, since otherwise the limited space of a private house would not have accommodated them for their meetings. For this reason, the number of congregations in a large town or a populous district was often quite considerable, each congregation having its own presbyter. Now it often happened that one congregation was composed primarily of well-to-do families, while another might consist almost entirely of the needy. Since the well-to-do families were eager to do as much good as possible with their wealth and did not always have the opportunity for this in their own congregation, it soon became necessary to establish ties among the separate congregations by selecting someone to keep in touch with all the presbyters of the district. It was that person’s task to find out from the presbyters the number of those in need of assistance and what help was available. In this way a system of giving and helping was inaugurated, for the presbyters kept an accurate record both of the numbers of the poor and of the means available for aid in their respective congregations. The person who took charge of the exchange and distribution of supplies and relief for the congregations of an entire district was called ‘Episcopos’, the word from which your modern word ‘bishop’ is derived. It means ‘supervisor’. He had no dealings with the members of the individual congregations. His duty was to meet with the presbyters of his district, to discuss and organize cooperative efforts in providing Christian aid, and to forward supplies to the various presbyters for final distribution. It was only natural that the presbyters and the ‘Episcopos’, or bishop, should also discuss other important questions relating to their caring for the souls of their parishioners during such conferences. Like the presbyters, the bishop was not elected by mortals, but was appointed by pronouncement from the spirits of God.

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