pressure, to the end (Ignatius’) of bearing witness to Him and coming out on the other side in complete union with his Son. And that is a very different matter. Ignatius’ total Christian witness, I want to add here, is surely not limited to his martyrdom or his letters, but lies as well in his role as bishop of Antioch for the several decades before he was caught up in the persecution instigated by Trajan that ends his life.17 It is his witness in that role after all that led to his being made an example. Of course, it is in the last episode of that life and in the letters he wrote on the way to his death that reveal what that life was made of and ultimately made for. By the grace of God, though, he was prepared many years in advance for what we are proffered in these seven letters. Conclusion Ignatius’ “letters to the world” are a unique and priceless spiritual treasure that manifests what it means to be a faithful, humble, but powerful witness to the living Christ by imitating, in his own circumstances, the oblation of his Lord.18 In doing so, he shows the rest of us what it means to be a disciple prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. It is a death made holy, not by what was done to him, but by virtue of his willingness to sacrifice himself for a faith that leads to life everlasting. And that is certainly no mean goal. Finally, for Ignatius, the willingness to die a martyr’s death marks one as a true disciple of Christ. Granted, few of us are called to witness to Christ as martyrs in blood; however, as Cardinal Wuerl notes, we all are called to live as Christ did.19 If we do that, if we live in and for him and for his Body, we will be prepared, insofar as possible, for the final occasion of witness should it come. The rest is in His hands. 1
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticano, 1997), no. 2473.
2 Eusebius in his commentary on Ignatius states that the martyr exhorted his readers “to adhere firmly to the tradition of the apostles, which, for the sake of security, he deemed it necessary to attest by committing it to writing” (emphasis added). Fair enough as far as it goes, but my argument is that it does not go nearly far enough toward explaining Ignatius’ motivation as well as the sheer passion and intensity of the author’s language. See Eusebius, Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, trans. C. F. Cruse (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Press, 1998), 100. 3
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, To the Martyrs: A Reflection on the Supreme Christian Witness (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2015), 8. The Cardinal’s book is itself an eloquent and timely witness not only to martyrs of the ancient past but to those of more recent periods, including the present moment. To paraphrase a line from Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun, martyrdom is never dead; it’s not even past. 4
T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980), 191, 196. 5
Emphasis added. St. Thomas More, A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, ed. Louis L. Martz and Frank Manley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 316. 6
The paradoxical nature of the Christian life is seen elsewhere, of course, in the writings of St. Paul, as for instance in Romans: “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (Rom 6:8). All scriptural references in my text are cited from the RSV-2ndCE. See also in the same letter, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord” (Rom 14:8). A key point in general about Paul’s spirituality made clear in chapter four of 2 Corinthians is that our only power as followers of Christ lies in our weakness because it is there alone that God is able to work through us to accomplish his mission. The mission does not, cannot depend primarily on our talents, initiative, and abilities. I owe this view of Paul’s spirituality to Fr. Eugene Hensell, O.S.B., St. Meinrad Archabbey (IN) from a conference given on August 20, 2016. It is an insight that Ignatius himself had surely incorporated into his own spirituality long before he was called to his final witness. 7
7St. Ignatius of Antioch, “To the Ephesians,” The Letters of Ignatius, in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 219. Subsequent references in my text
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