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\n Sant'Ignazio di Antiochia<\/span>\n <\/div>\n
Feast date: Oct 17<\/p>\n
On Oct. 17, the Roman Catholic Church remembers the early Church Father, bishop, and martyr Saint Ignatius of Antioch, whose writings attest to the sacramental and hierarchical nature of the Church from its earliest days. Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate his memory on Dec. 20.<\/p>\n
\tIn a 2007 general audience on St. Ignatius of Antioch, Pope Benedict XVI observed that \u201cno Church Father has expressed the longing for union with Christ and for life in him with the intensity of Ignatius.\u201d In his letters, the Pope said, \u201cone feels the freshness of the faith of the generation which had still known the Apostles. In these letters, the ardent love of a saint can also be felt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tBorn in Syria in the middle of the first century A.D., Ignatius is said to have been personally instructed \u2013 along with another future martyr, Saint Polycarp \u2013 by the Apostle Saint John. When Ignatius became the Bishop of Antioch around the year 70, he assumed leadership of a local church that was, according to tradition, first led by Saint Peter before his move to Rome.<\/p>\n
\tAlthough St. Peter transmitted his Papal primacy to the bishops of Rome rather than Antioch, the city played an important role in the life of the early Church. Located in present-day Turkey, it was a chief city of the Roman Empire, and was also the location where the believers in Jesus\u2019 teachings and his resurrection were first called \u201cChristians.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tIgnatius led the Christians of Antioch during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian, the first of the emperors to proclaim his divinity by adopting the title \u201cLord and God.\u201d Subjects who would not give worship to the emperor under this title could be punished with death. As the leader of a major Catholic diocese during this period, Ignatius showed courage and worked to inspire it in others.<\/p>\n
\tAfter Domitian\u2019s murder in the year 96, his successor Nerva reigned only briefly, and was soon followed by the Emperor Trajan. Under his rule, Christians were once again liable to death for denying the pagan state religion and refusing to participate in its rites. It was during his reign that Ignatius was convicted for his Christian testimony and sent from Syria to Rome to be put to death.<\/p>\n
\tEscorted by a team of military guards, Ignatius nonetheless managed to compose seven letters: six to various local churches throughout the empire (including the Church of Rome), and one to his fellow bishop Polycarp who would give his own life for Christ several decades later.<\/p>\n
\tIgnatius\u2019 letters passionately stressed the importance of Church unity, the dangers of heresy, and the surpassing importance of the Eucharist as the \u201cmedicine of immortality.\u201d These writings contain the first surviving written description of the Church as \u201cCatholic,\u201d from the Greek word indicating both universality and fullness.<\/p>\n
\tOne of the most striking features of Ignatius\u2019 letters, is his enthusiastic embrace of martyrdom as a means to union with God and eternal life. \u201cAll the pleasures of the world, and all the kingdoms of this earth, shall profit me nothing,\u201d he wrote to the Church of Rome. \u201cIt is better for me to die in behalf of Jesus Christ, than to reign over all the ends of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cNow I begin to be a disciple,\u201d the bishop declared. \u201cLet fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let tearings, breakings, and dislocations of bones; let cutting off of members; let shatterings of the whole body; and let all the dreadful torments of the devil come upon me: Only let me attain to Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tSt. Ignatius of Antioch bore witness to Christ publicly for the last time in Rome\u2019s Flavian Amphitheater, where he was mauled to death by lions. \u201cI am the wheat of the Lord,\u201d he had declared, before facing them. \u201cI must be ground by the teeth of these beasts to be made the pure bread of Christ.\u201d His memory was honored, and his bones venerated, soon after his death around the year 107.<\/p>\n