Ignatius of Antioch (d. early first century). Antakya in Turkey today. Third patriarch of Antioch after St. Peter and Evodius. Peter himself wanted Ignatius appointed? Opulent centre of trade in Roman Syria.

Child blessed by Jesus? Knew and was disciple of John the Apostle? Converted to Christianity. Effective witness, hence arrested. Made an example of by being taken to Rome under Trajan who disliked the tenacity of Christians in clinging to their faith. There was possibly some turbulence in the Christian community in Antioch which drew the attention of the Romans. But we don’t know the reason why taken to Rome.

Accompanied by 10 Roman soldiers on the long overland and seafaring journey. Tortuous journey. He calls them wild beasts and leopards in one of his letters, to the Romans. Still, they let him meet with Christian communities on the way and to write six letters to them and one to the Bishop of Smyrna (Izmir, Turkey), Polycarp. Eventually martyred in the colosseum, thrown to the lions, possibly 107 AD..

It is the letters he wrote, in great haste, which give us his Eucharistic doctrine and testimony. His letters are brief, forceful, dense in content, passionate even, about Christ and about the Church. At first sight they are simple, but there is a depth to them which is difficult to plumb.

(Dr. John Sehorn, Augustine Institute: main source for what follows)

For Ignatius, true Christianity is about unity. Not a unity engineered by us humans, but the unity of the Trinity opened up for us by the incarnation of Christ and by his death and Resurrection. We are united with each other not directly but in and through the Trinity. For Ignatius, this divine unity is mediated, maintained, and expressed in several ways connected with each other, including profession of orthodox faith, obedient communion with the bishops and clergy, and Eucharistic worship.

Ignatius follows St. Paul in linking the Eucharist with unity. To avoid schism, that is separation from Peter as head of the visible Church, he writes: “Make it a point, then, to participate in one Eucharist. For the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ is one, and one is the cup that yields unity in his blood” (Philadelphians 4:1; Sehorn’s trans.). Right observance of the Eucharist thus safeguards unity in the apostolic faith. Ignatius also stresses the link between Eucharistic worship and communion with the Church’s hierarchy, which fosters unity among the community of believers (Smyrnaeans 8.1–2).

Ignatius’s mentions of the Eucharist are not so numerous, but they are arresting and powerful. In one famous passage, Ignatius laments that “those who hold heretical opinions about the grace of Jesus Christ … refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up” (Smyrnaeans 6.2). This is stunningly realistic language. But if we fixate on the fact that Ignatius believes in the Real Presence, we run the risk of failing to notice why the Real Presence matters to him.

Because it unites us to Christ who suffered and was raised, the Eucharist “is the medicine of immortality, the antidote we take in order not to die but to live forever in Jesus Christ” (Ephesians20.2). This “medicine,” however, does not leave us untransformed, for in this case, the medicine is the Physician himself (see Ephesians 7.2). He himself is “our never-failing life” (Magnesians1.2). To be united to the person of Jesus also means being united to his faithfulness and love toward both God and others. In one passage, Ignatius simply identifies our faithfulness with “the flesh of the Lord” and our love with “the blood of Jesus Christ” (Trallians8.1). Precisely because it “incorporates us into Christ” the Eucharist enables us to love God and one another with Christ’s own fidelity and charity, which is the very content of salvation (Ephesians 14.1).

To the Roman church Ignatius writes, “I want the bread of God, which is the flesh of Christ who is of the seed of David; and for drink I want his blood, which is incorruptible love” (Romans 7.3). Ignatius is not speaking here of a sacramental celebration but of his own impending martyrdom. “I am God’s wheat,” he writes earlier, “and I am being ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, so that I may prove to be pure bread” (Romans 4.1). Because it unites us to Christ’s loving obedience to the Father, supremely expressed in his death for our sake, the Eucharist prepares us for martyrdom, and martyrdom is a completion of our reception of the Eucharist.  For this reason, in the early Church, outside of Sunday, Mass was only celebrated on the feast day of martyrs. Ignatius can write to the Christians at Smyrna that they “are established in an unshakeable faith, having been nailed, as it were, to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in both body and spirit, and firmly established in love by the blood of Christ” (Smyrnaeans 1.1). The faithfulness and love they encounter in the Eucharist already conforms them to the Lord’s death on the cross, of which Ignatius hopes “to be an imitator” in his martyrdom (Romans 6.3). For Ignatius there is no other way, for Christ’s “life is not in us unless we voluntarily choose to die in his suffering”—whether or not this takes the form of red martyrdom (Magnesians 5.2).

Union with Christ and his Father additionally entails love of others, especially the needy. In the context of the line quoted earlier about the reality of the Eucharist, Ignatius also remarks that the heterodox “have no concern for love, none for the widow, none for the orphan, none for the oppressed, none for the prisoner or the one released, none for the hungry or thirsty” (Smyrnaeans 6.2). To Ignatius’s way of thinking, failure to acknowledge Christ in the Sacrament is intrinsically connected with failure to care for him in the downtrodden. Today this may seem counterintuitive, but it was not for ancient Christians, who recognized the very same Christ, “God [who] appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life” (Ephesians 19.3), in the Eucharist and in the poor. The Eucharist unites us to the one who, “though he was rich, … became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The Eucharist commits us to the poor” (1397). Ignatius’s exhortation to Bishop Polycarp to exercise “constant care for both physical and spiritual concerns” is thus strictly in keeping with his doctrinal and liturgical convictions. In this way Polycarp will be able to “[f]ocus on unity, for there is nothing better” (Polycarp 1.2).

For Ignatius, in sum, by uniting us to God and neighbour in faith and love, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist transforms us, so that we may not merely be called Christians, but truly beChristians. St Ignatius, pray for us!