Feast of Saints Timothy and Titus – Luke 10:1–9
Jesus sends the seventy-two ahead of him with a warning that sounds almost cruel: “I am sending you like lambs among wolves.” Not armed. Not protected. Not privileged. Just lambs—vulnerable, exposed, dependent on God alone.
The Church has always loved this image. It flatters our self-understanding. We are the fragile ones in a hostile world. We are the innocent lambs sent into the darkness of paganism, secularism, and relativism, which is right in most ways. And yet if we are painfully honest—today the Gospel cuts in the opposite direction.
The plague of the Church in our time is not primarily that lambs are among wolves. Rather, we come across the wolves who are among the lambs—wearing vestments, using holy language, and hiding behind the altar. This is precisely what Jesus warns us about.
The monstrous tragedy that has ripped through the Body of Christ is that predator priests, men with credible evidence against them and in many cases found guilty by civil law, were not sent among wolves but were allowed to live among lambs: children, the vulnerable, the trusting, the wounded. Those who came seeking Christ encountered instead a counterfeit shepherd. And this is why today’s Gospel should make us tremble.
Because Jesus does not merely speak of mission—He speaks of trust. The lamb trusts the shepherd.
The people trusted the priest, but that trust was betrayed.
Saints Timothy and Titus, whose feast we celebrate today, were not powerful men. They were fragile bishops, young, anxious, and easily dismissed. Paul exhorts Timothy not to dominate but to guard the deposit, to keep the faith pure, to correct with patience, and to live transparently. Their authority was moral before it was institutional. Their credibility came from the holiness of their office.
The sexual abuse crisis is not merely a moral failure—it is a theological collapse. It is what happens when shepherds forget they are lambs first; when power replaces obedience; when the priesthood becomes a hiding place instead of a sacrifice. The wolves were not sent—they stayed. And worse, they were protected. Silence became policy, and reputation became an idol. The wounded were asked to carry the burden so the institution could appear whole.
Jesus tells the apostles: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.” In other words: no armour, no disguises, no protection from accountability.
We as a Church are called anew to learn the poverty of the Gospel, for in this poverty we rediscover our freedom for truth. When we embrace transparency, we stand again in the apostolic light; when we protect the innocent with courage, we reveal the heart of the Good Shepherd; and when we listen to the wounded with reverence, we become once more the living presence of Christ in the world.
This feast is not about nostalgia for a purer Church. It is about conversion. The kind that costs us everything. The kind that burns away clericalism. The kind that dismantles false piety. The kind that returns the Church to her true form: not a fortress of power, but a flock gathered around a crucified Shepherd.
Therefore, as a Church, we have a major responsibility here: before sending missionaries anew, we must root out the wolves—above all, those lurking in formation. Because the Gospel is still true, lambs are sent among wolves, but woe to us if, like wolves, we are deaf to the cries of the lambs.
