A Christian In Fact And Not Just In Name

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - October 12, 2007

Next Wednesday the Church celebrates the feast of one of the most heroic, influential and important saints of all time, St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in Rome in the year 107.

He is probably the greatest saint of the first generation of Christians after the apostles. As a young boy, he learned the faith at the feet of St. John the Evangelist. As a young man, he was chosen to succeed as bishop of Antioch St. Evodius, who himself took over for St. Peter. It was in Antioch, we read in the Acts of the Apostles, that the disciples were first called Christians, and under Ignatius' forty years as bishop, the disciples grew in faith, charity, and courage.

In 107, under the emperor Trajan, he was arrested and sentenced to death for the crime of being Christian. The Roman authorities desired to obtain the maximal deterrent value from his death, so they decided to bring him to Rome to be devoured by beasts in the Colosseum; along the way, they would parade him to ports in Asia minor where Christians were in great numbers, to dissuade them from following him along the same deadly path. Needless to say, their effect of their plans backfired.

Along his way, Ignatius strengthened the Christians in every community he visited. He also wrote letters to those Christian communities he couldn't visit, instructing them in the truths of the faith and imploring them to be faithful.

The seven letters that have come to us are real treasures, especially for Catholics who are trying to bring their Protestant brothers and sisters to the fullness of the faith, because they show clearly that in the year 107 — within a generation of the death of St. John — many teachings that Protestant Reformers rejected were already firmly held.

Ignatius taught clearly about the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He calls the Eucharist the "flesh of Christ," and denounces the docetist heretics who "do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ."

He also describes a Catholic understanding of the structure of the Church and the sacrament of Holy Orders. "He who acts independently of the bishop, priests and deacons," he wrote to the Trallians, "is not pure."

He even gives us the earliest example of the expression "Catholic Church," when he links it to Christ and to the person of the Bishop. "Wherever the bishop appears," he told the Smynaeans, "there let the people be, even as wherever Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church."

While I was in college I printed out a copy of these letters and gave them to a Protestant friend with whom I used to debate the truths of Christianity. After reading St. Ignatius and recognizing that Christians from the first generation have believed in the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, the Church and holy orders, he became a Catholic the following Easter. I would encourage you to read them and pass them on to your Protestant friends as well.

St. Ignatius' most famous and influential teaching, however, comes from his letter to the Romans. It is aun unforgettable testimony of burning love for God, of faith-filled courage in the face of the greatest of human fears, and of a desire for the things of heaven that orders all earthly choices.

While on his slow journey to Rome, he got word that some Christians were trying to use political connections to try to save him from execution. Ignatius appreciated the gesture, but begged them to desist.

"I am writing to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: Do not show me any worldly kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God's wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ's pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God.

"He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire. The time for my birth is close at hand. Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not stand in the way of my birth to real life."

He saw his death not as an end, but as a beginning.

"Now I begin to be a Christian. May nothing visible or invisible stop me from attaining Jesus Christ. Come fire and cross, gashes and rendings, breaking of bones and mangling of limbs, the shattering in pieces of my whole body; come all the wicked torments of the Devil upon me — if I may but attain Jesus Christ."

Then he made one final appeal, one dying wish, to the Roman Christians:

"Therefore, you cannot do me a greater favor than to permit me to be poured out as a libation to God while the altar is ready; that, forming a choir in love, you may give thanks to the Father by Jesus Christ that God has chosen to bring me, a Syrian bishop, from the east to the west to pass out of this world, that I may rise again to Him. … Only pray for me that God may give me grace within as well as without, not only to say it but to desire it, that I may not only be called but be found a Christian."

May St. Ignatius intercede for us to obtain the gift of true Christian courage, that we may all prove to be Christians not just in name but in fact as well.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.