On this feast of our parish Patron, the bishop and martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch, our first reading and Gospel are taken not from the normal Sunday lectionary readings, but from the readings proper to the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch. And these readings are chosen by the Church because they have some relevance to the life and lessons of St. Ignatius. And so, I’d like to reflect on these readings a bit.
“Be imitators of me” says St. Paul. A command that certainly sounds a bit strange to our modern ears, but in the ancient Greco-Roman world, it was a common and acceptable practice for teachers to point to themselves as examples. And if anyone could say this, it was Paul, for he had so taken the Gospel to heart, had so centered his life on Christ. Christianity wasn't just part of his life; Christianity was his life. And, remember, Paul wasn’t just giving God lip service: he is writing this letter from prison. We do well to imitate Paul in taking the Gospel so seriously that the world wants to lock us up for it. And like Paul to seek such a seek to imitate Jesus Christ to such a degree that our identity and personality is merged with His so much so that people detect and see Christ in us.
Paul then says, don’t just imitate me but “observe those who conduct themselves according to this model.” Paul humbly recognizes that he is not the only model, and instructs all Christians to look to the sains.
Protestants are sometimes perturbed, as they often are by us Catholics, because of our great devotion to studying the lives of the saints. Why go to the saints, they say, when you can just go to Jesus. But we do so because the Word of God, Sacred Scripture, tells us to. “Observe those who conduct themselves according to this model”.
From the earliest centuries, Christians have looked to the saints—to learn from them and also simply to glorify God who shines his light through them. God transforms ordinary people, like you and me, to become powerful instruments of His goodness. And we’re to study them; study their prayer lives, study how they put the gifts of the Spirit into use; how they use their time, how they turn away from the world in order to turn to Christ.
But, remember, the saints weren’t just born super Christians. Sometimes we are tempted to think, “Oh, I’m too insignificant to do much for God”, “I don’t have what it takes to convert non-believers, I can barely balance my checkbook and remain patient with my kids”. But, over and over throughout history, God chooses the weak and insignificant to accomplish mighty deeds.
With so many of the saints, we know nothing about where they were born, who their parents were, what their education looked like. And that’s fitting because most of them were nobodies. No one was chronicling their lives because they were unimportant in the eyes of the world. And it’s not until maybe even their final days do we have the details of their heroic works of charity or martyrdoms or words of preaching.
Such is the case for our patron, St. Ignatius of Antioch. We don’t really know where he was born. We don’t know the names of his parents or if he had siblings. There is a legend that he was the young boy who Jesus called over to sit on his lap in the Gospels, but that is just a legend. He may or may not have been Jewish prior to his conversion to Christ. We just don’t know these details…he kind of emerges out of the mist of history when he is ordained a bishop by St. John the Apostle in the year 66.
We can surmise that Ignatius was pretty trustworthy—as he was placed by one of the original twelve apostles as bishop of Antioch—which was the largest city in the empire outside of Rome. Antioch had a population of a million people two thousand years ago—that’s three times the size of modern day Cleveland. Ignatius not only trustworthy, but he was deeply orthodox—meaning—he took very seriously a bishop’s duty to teach the Gospel without error--the duty of “guarding the deposit of faith—as St. Paul describes it to the bishop St. Timothy.
Like St. Paul, bishop Ignatius was arrested; he was marched to his death in Rome. But while he made his death march to Rome, Ignatius, like Paul, wrote letters exhorting and instructing the Church. Seven of those letters have survived the centuries. We have Ignatius’ letter to the Ephesians and Romans, to whom Paul also wrote, and also Ignatius’ letters to the Magnesians, Trallians Philadelphians and Smyrnaeans. And he wrote a letter to his brother bishop St. Polycarp, who was also consecrated bishop by St. John the Apostle. In fact, both Ignatius and Polycarp are depicted together in the stained glass window in the east nave, depicted at the feet of the Apostle John. Under that window, Ignatius is depicted in his pastoral care for his flock at Antioch, his arrest by the emperor, and finally, his martyrdom.
In his letter to the Romans, Ignatius writes: “I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God…Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread.”
And that is why, dear brethren, we hear the Gospel today--St John’s Gospel, of Our Lord’s teaching about the grain of wheat: "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” St. Ignatius, took this teaching to heart, imparted to him by the Apostle who ordained him.
St. Ignatius died a martyrs death, devoured by lions in the Roman coliseum. But Ignatius, like Paul, believed that imprisonment and martyrdom is not a failure for a Christian, but a victory. Martyrdom is the ultimate witness. The martyrs embrace suffering and death for Christ, and their witness helps us believe with greater faith that the Gospel is the Good News. Witnessing that Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again, is more important than anything else.
“Come fire and cross, gashes and rending, breaking of bones and mangling of limbs, the shattering in pieces of my whole body; come all the wicked torments of the Devil upon me,” writes Ignatius, “if I may but attain unto Jesus Christ.”
If the grain of wheat dies it produces much fruit. Well, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and the saints and martyrs, continue to bear fruit in our lives when we allow ourselves to become like the grain of wheat: imitate him in courageously putting to death worldly pleasures in order to attain Christian perfection, embracing hardship and suffering to help others know and love Jesus.
Upon the small table in the middle of the sanctuary, is a relic of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a piece of bone. And I invite you to direct your prayers to St. Ignatius today, asking him to help you to love Jesus today, to obtain blessings for your family and for this parish, to assist you in bearing witness, despite all of your weaknesses, to become wheat for Christ—for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
