2 Timothy 1:6
For which cause I admonish thee, that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee, by the imposition of my hands.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Propter quam causam admoneo te ut resuscites gratiam Dei, quæ est in te per impositionem manuum mearum.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- διʼ ἣν αἰτίαν ἀναμιμνῄσκω σε ἀναζωπυρεῖν τὸ χάρισμα τοῦ θεοῦ, ὅ ἐστιν ἐν σοὶ διὰ τῆς ἐπιθέσεως τῶν χειρῶν μου·
Haydock's commentary
That thou stir up2 the grace of God. In the Greek is a metaphor for fire that is blown up again.
Which is in thee by the imposition of my hands, when thou wast ordained bishop. (Witham)
The grace, which St. Paul here exhorts Timothy to stir up in him, was the grace he had received by imposition of hands, either in his confirmation, or at receiving the sacrament of orders, being a bishop. This verse seems to shew that the imposition of hands is used in these two sacraments, as the essential matter of the sacraments, being the instrumental cause of the grace therein conferred. (Denis the Carthusian)
2 Ut resuscites, anazopurein, quasi sopitum ignem excitare.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XXIX
“And what,” saith one, “is a working?” and what “a gift?” and what “a ministration?” They are mere differences of names, since the things are the same. For what “a gift” is, that is “a ministration,” that he calls “an operation” also. Thus fulfil thy ministry; ( 2 Tim. iv. 5 . ministry .) and, “I magnify my ministration:” ( Rom. xi. 13 . office .) and writing to Timothy, he says, “Therefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee. ( 2 Tim. i. 6 .) And again, writing to the Galatians, he said, “for he that wrought in Peter to the Apostleship, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles. ( Gal. ii. 8 .) Seest thou that he implies that there is no difference in the gifts of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost? Not confounding the Persons, God forbid! but declaring the equal honor of the Essence. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, 2 Timothy 1:1,2
Ver. 6 . “Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.”
St John Cassian The Conferences of John Cassian. Part II. Containing Conferences XI-XVII, Chapter XII. That a good will should not always be attributed to grace, nor always to man himself
For we should not hold that God made man such that he can never will or be capable of what is good: or else He has not granted him a free will, if He has suffered him only to will or be capable of evil, but neither to will or be capable of what is good of himself. And, in this case how will that first statement of the Lord made about men after the fall stand: “Behold, Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil?” For we cannot think that before, he was such as to be altogether ignorant of good. Otherwise we should have to admit that he was formed like some irrational and insensate beast: which is sufficiently absurd and altogether alien from the Catholic faith. Moreover as the wisest Solomon says: “God made man upright,” i.e., always to enjoy the knowledge of good only, “But they have sought out many imaginations,” for they came, as has been said, to know good and evil. …