The Life
Saint Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch — the very city where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. Tradition tells us that when Ignatius was a small boy, the Lord himself picked him up in his arms and said: unless you turn and become like little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Ignatius spent the rest of his life trying to be that child. When the Roman emperor sentenced him to be torn apart by lions in the Colosseum, Ignatius was so eager to die for Christ that he begged the Roman Christians not to try to save him. On the long march from Antioch to Rome, he wrote seven letters that have shaped the Church ever since. He is one of the brightest stars at the very dawn of Christian history.
There is a passage in the Gospel where the disciples were arguing about who among them would be greatest in the Kingdom. The Lord called a small child over, set him in the middle of them, and said: unless you turn and become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Tradition of the Church tells us that this little boy was Ignatius. The Lord himself held him. That is why the Church calls him Theophoros — the God-Bearer — because Christ bore him in his arms before he ever bore Christ in his heart.
Ignatius and his friend Polycarp of Smyrna were both disciples of the Apostle John — the same John who had leaned against the Lord’s chest at the Last Supper, the John who had stood with Mary at the foot of the Cross, the John who would later write the Gospel that begins "In the beginning was the Word." Ignatius learned the Faith directly from a man who had spent three years walking and eating with the Lord himself. That is how close he was to the source.
Antioch was where the disciples were first called Christians — the Acts of the Apostles tells us so. Ignatius became the second bishop of that city, after Bishop Euodius, who had been one of the Seventy Apostles. As bishop, Ignatius gave everything he had to the church. He organized the singing of the Liturgy in two choirs answering each other — antiphonal singing — because he had been given a vision of the angels in heaven praising God that way. He led his people through the persecution of Domitian. He built up everything he could.
In the year 107, the Emperor Trajan passed through Antioch and was told there was a bishop named Ignatius who was openly teaching people to scorn the gods of Rome and worship Jesus Christ instead. Before Trajan could send for him, Ignatius walked into the imperial presence himself — he wanted to take the persecution onto his own shoulders rather than have it fall on his flock. Trajan tried to make him offer incense to the pagan gods. Ignatius refused. So Trajan sentenced him to be sent to Rome and torn apart by wild beasts in the Colosseum. Ignatius accepted the sentence with joy.
The Roman soldiers marched Ignatius from Antioch all the way across Asia Minor and Greece toward Rome. It was a journey of months. At every stop, the local Christians came out to see him, weeping, begging for his blessing. Along the way Ignatius wrote letters — seven letters in all. To the Christians at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, Smyrna, and a personal letter to his friend Saint Polycarp. The letters are intense, urgent, full of love. He begs the Roman Christians not to try to rescue him: "I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread." Sixteen hundred years later, Christians are still reading these letters.
In his letter to the Christians at Ephesus, Ignatius gave us one of the most beautiful descriptions of the Eucharist ever written: he called it "the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death." When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ at the Liturgy, we are receiving Christ himself — not a symbol, not a sign, but the actual Lord. He is medicine for our wounded souls. He is the antidote to the death that has poisoned the human race. Ignatius saw this with absolute clarity, two thousand years ago, and the Orthodox Church has confessed it ever since.
Ignatius wrote this from somewhere on the road, knowing exactly what was waiting for him in the Colosseum. He compared himself to wheat — the very thing that becomes the Bread of the Eucharist. The lions would grind him into Christ’s flesh, the way wheat is ground into flour, the way bread becomes the Body of the Lord. He wanted his death to be an Eucharist.
Saint Paul wrote these words from a Roman prison, expecting to die. Ignatius wrote his own letters from a similar place, with the same conviction: to be with Christ is far better than anything this world can give. He genuinely longed to die for the love of his Lord. We who have been formed by softer expectations need to read his letters slowly. They show us what Paul actually meant.
On December 20 — a pagan festival day, the day of the Saturnalian games — they brought Ignatius into the arena. He turned to the spectators and said: "Men of Rome, you know that I am sentenced to death, not because of any crime, but because of my love for God, by Whose love I am embraced. I long to be with Him, and offer myself to him as a pure loaf, made of fine wheat ground fine by the teeth of wild beasts." Then they let the lions out. The lions tore him to pieces. They left only his heart and a few bones. When the Christians cut his heart open afterward, they found inscribed inside, in gold letters, the name: Jesus Christ. He had been carrying it within him his whole life.
Ignatius matters to every Orthodox Christian because he shows us, at the very dawn of the Church, what the Faith actually looks like when it goes all the way down. The Eucharist is the medicine of immortality. The bishop is the icon of Christ. The Church is the Catholic Church. Christians do not run from death but go to it singing. Ignatius wrote and lived these things, all of them, in seven short letters and one long walk to a Roman arena. He has been in heaven for nineteen centuries, and he is still teaching us what we believe.