Today we honor St. Ignatius, a wonderful man, and there is a
tradition that when he was a small child Jesus lifted him into is lap. He was
the second bishop in Antioch following St. Peter, and at a public Roman
ceremony, he refused to burn incense in honor of the Roman gods. His case went
all the way up to Emperor Trajan, who decided Ignatius would need to be brought
to Rome to be fed to the lions, because refusal to honor Rome’s gods was
classed as the crime of treason.
There was a platoon of Roman soldiers who were scheduled to
go home to Rome on furlough, and they were charged with bringing Ignatius to
Rome and the Coliseum’s lions. Along the way they stopped in seven ports along
the coast of Turkey, and in each of them the Christians came down to speak
with Ignatius who was chained to the mast. When they got around to Greece,
Ignatius wrote a note back to the Christians in each port where he had spent a
night.
His seven letters are the first Christian documents dated
from after those in the Bible. His Letters tell us some wonderful things. He
wrote that priests should be in accord with their bishop like its strings are
one with their harp. He said Communion was the bread of immortality.
Perhaps the most beautiful thing he wrote was in the letter
he sent ahead to the Christians in Rome. He wrote as follows.
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