1 Timothy 5:3-16 - The Support Of Widows

³ Show consideration for widows--I mean those who are really widowed. ⁴ but, if a widow has children or grand-children, let them learn to show proper regard for the members of their own family first, and to make some return to their parents; for that is pleasing in God's sight. ⁵ As for the woman who is really widowed and left quite alone, her hopes are fixed on God, and she devotes herself to prayers and supplications night and day. ⁶ But the life of a widow who is devoted to pleasure is a living death. ⁷ Those are the points on which you should dwell, that there may be no call for your censure. ⁸ Any one who fails to provide for his own relations, and especially for those under his own roof, has disowned the Faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.

⁹ A widow, when her name is added to the list, should not be less than sixty years old; she should have been a faithful wife, ¹⁰ and be well spoken of for her kind actions. She should have brought up children, have shown hospitality to strangers, have washed the feet of her fellow Christians, have relieved those who were in distress, and devoted herself to every kind of good action. ¹¹ But you should exclude the younger widows from the list; for, when they grow restive under the yoke of the Christ, they want to marry, ¹² and so they bring condemnation upon themselves for having broken their previous promise. ¹³ And not only that, but they learn to be idle as they go about from house to house. Nor are they merely idle, but they also become gossips and busy-bodies, and talk of what they ought not. ¹⁴ Therefore I advise young widows to marry, bear children, and attend to their homes, and so avoid giving the enemy an opportunity for scandal. ¹⁵ There are some who have already left us, to follow Satan. ¹⁶ Any Christian woman, who has relations who are widows, ought to relieve them and not allow them to become a burden to the Church, so that the Church may relieve those widows who are really widowed.