OCTOBER 17, 2007-ST IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH: PHIL 3:17-4:1; JOHN 12:24-26

 

THE MAN WHO LOVES HIS LIFE LOSES IT, WHILE THE MAN WHO HATES HIS LIFE IN THIS WORLD PRESERVES IT TO LIFE ETERNAL. We commemorate in the liturgy today a bishop of the primitive Church who preached and lived the Gospel at the cost of his life. St Ignatius was the successor of St Peter in the see of Antioch in Syria, and so he occupied the most prominent office in the post-apostolic Church. Our Lord=s death was the beginning, not the end, of a persecution that was directed against his followers as well as his own person. As a result, most of the faithful left Jerusalem, many settled in Antioch, Peter among them. James remained in Jerusalem as head of the Church there only to be put to death after a short while. His successor, St Simeon, after 40 years as bishop, also suffered persecution. He was condemned to death in the same period as St. Ignatius, in the persecution decreed by the Roman Emperor, Trajan, about110 A.D. Ignatius then lived in a time of troubles for the Church; to believe and live the faith was to accept the loss of human rights, including life itself.

Ignatius is better known as a person than other early martyrs and Church leaders for seven of the remarkable letters he wrote while on the journey taking him to Rome and martyrdom have been preserved. They are among the oldest Christian documents outside the New Testament. Five are written to the Churches which provided representatives to greet him as the ship carrying him touched land in their neighborhood. One is written to bishop Polycarp who himself would be put to death later. The most revealing of these seven was addressed to the Romans whom he was about to encounter in person upon being taken to their city. What constitutes the chief interest of all these missives is the view they give of his dispositions and more particularly of his personal relation to the Lord Jesus. Ignatius makes lucidly clear that the essence of the Christian faith is one=s personal union with the risen, living Lord Jesus. He presumes that the faithful are familiar with this spirituality and so feels no need to describe it in extended detail, but simply witnesses to the intensity of his desire to be with Christ. This longing is sufficiently strong to overcome the fear of death. Death for him is the beginning of that life which is full and without end for it is the very life of God that is given in the Risen Lord. He has no doubt that Christ is God, and thus remains a major witness to this conviction as the living faith of the primitive Church. He is persuaded that Christ lives in the soul of his faithful followers, and affirms that they are temples of God, and bear Christ within themselves. In fact, to express these truths he coined new words: Theophoros, naophoros, Christophoros (God-bearer, temple-bearer, Christ-bearer: Ep to Eph 9.2). This interior life is necessarily expressed by union with the bishop and participation in the liturgy. It is not surpring then that he applies this view of the Church to the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity withe Christ and unity among the faithful..