A simple job description that stares at us from the beginning

The activities of deacons in the early church: “most of their real work lay outside the sanctuary…. In particular they looked after the poor, the sick, the mentally deranged, widows, orphans, Christians who might be in prison. In the second half of the fourth century, this had become an enormous responsibility…. [Chrysostom] was to claim that [the church in Antioch] had to maintain upwards of three thousand widows and virgins, not to mention a host of prisoners in jail, people who were sick or in hospital, others who were impoverished or maimed, others still who crouched by the altar in desperate need of food and clothing.”

Who will help us?