In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Today is the feast of Saint Ignatius of Antioch of Syria. We all know today where Syria is. He died approximately 01/2007. That's when his martyrdom was.
01/2007, probably in the persecution of traitor. Now, get this picture. He comes from Antioch Of Syria. His martyrdom is way over here at the opposite end of the sea in Rome. He traveled that and he traveled overland.
This we're sure of. He traveled overland from Antioch Of Syria all the way to Rome in the company of an escort of Roman soldiers, chained. Being taken a captive to Rome to be thrown into the arena with the beasts. Now, the course of that journey, he wrote seven letters. They're not long letters, but they're letters.
And they are among the most absolutely priceless documents we have of the early church. And there are seven of these letters, beyond all doubt authentic and and all that kind of business. There's no question about their authenticity and and their completeness and all of those literary critical problems. Written in Greek, of course. This man was a voluntary martyr.
He wanted to die for Christ. Now, there are last year, a group in this parish, spent about well, we spent maybe two months or more, oh, more than that, reading Saint Ignatius of Antioch's letters. Now, let me where do you tackle this? What do you say in 1980 in Garrett Park about one of our own who was fed to the beasts in about 01/2007 in Rome. And when you read his letters, they are familiar.
They are they are as familiar in their content as Paul's. Now, there are so many important things about it. Notice he dies in around 01/2007, the turn of the the first century. Here he is writing letters. This man seems to know most, if not all, of Paul's letters.
Notice that. Why do we know it? Because he quotes them. Secondly, he is writing to churches. In other words, at the turn of the first century, you have organized Christian communities with bishops, with presbyters, and he's writing to them.
And they have one common faith. And what's he writing about? First of all, he's writing to affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ. Secondly, he is writing to confirm Christ's passion, his death, and his resurrection. And he is one of his most important aims is to preserve the unity of the church.
What kind of unity? First of all, he had the same problem of Paul. The Judaizers who wanted to make Christians in some way come to Christianity through the Judaic law. And it was much more than circumcision. But more than that, here you have in the earliest days of the church, here you have Ignatius writing to preserve the humanity of Jesus Christ.
Because remember, he's a Greek. He's coming from Antioch Of Syria all the way over to Rome. That culture was almost 100% Hellenic Greek. Now, if there's any if there's one aspect, and this is kind of a contradiction, you know, but that culture had a very low opinion of matter and what we call our bodies. And as the concept of the son of God grew, the Greek mind in many instances could not accept the fact that God almighty had associated himself with matter, with a body.
They couldn't accept that. That was absolutely degrading to think of the almighty God taking some kind of matter to be himself. So what did they do? They did not reject Christ's coming. They did not reject Jesus Christ as the son of God, but they rejected Jesus Christ as having a true body.
You'd say, well, how do you figure that out? Whenever a body in Christ's time seemed to have seen him and have felt him. They said, oh, it was an illusion. And the Greek word for that is dokine, which in English becomes docetism. So, was this heresy now this this is at the first century and this will continue on for several centuries.
This idea that Jesus Christ was not truly a human being, and that what and that if he seemed to be a human being, it was only an illusion, an appearance, a seeming, a docetism. So, Ignatius rose up against it and defended Jesus Christ as the son of Mary, truly man with a body, as truly a body as any other human being had. And this when you read his letters, they are alive. Here's a man on route to be martyred and he wants it. He's loved and he wants and he writes to to the Roman church that do not interfere.
Do not keep me from meeting my lord. And his very first letter, he calls himself, Ignatius, Ignatius, the bearer of God. That was not an he did that in order to distinguish himself from men with other names, but he called himself the bearer of God. Now, when if I'm enthusiastic about Ignatius of Antioch, who wouldn't be? The only trouble is that the Catholic church or many Catholics today forget there was an Ignatius of Antioch.
We are one with this man. He could be setting in those views. He'd feel comfortable here. He might not understand English too well, but his English would be as good as my Greek. You read his books and you feel you're we understand him.
He's one of us, and it's almost two thousand years ago. Two thousand years ago. Now, what does Ignatius tell us today? He's an example Notice, there are plenty of people who and who would who would say, look, this man exaggerated this martyrdom thing. And the church was very the church had I mean, the Catholic church.
The church was speaking with authority and with its teaching wisdom. It stepped in and said, look, don't be rushing to martyrdom. That doesn't make sense. It had to put the brakes on people. The church is doing it all the time.
So Antioch's a little extremist and no doubt about that at all. But what a man he was, and how he writes, how he tries to insist upon the people to be true to their faith, to be true to Jesus Christ, to keep the unity of their faith, to have their to have to renew their conviction and their persuasion about the son of God, Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man. And have nothing to do with these you see, remember, so often these heretics by heretic, I simply mean one who disagrees with the teaching of the church. They are the elite. They are the intelligentsia.
These docetists, they were above matter. They were above the common herd. They had a very spiritual outlook upon life. They couldn't be identified with this muddy, grubby, dirty, sinful matter. See?
See that? The church has nicked. The church has always said there's nothing wrong. I say the church. There is nothing evil about matter.
There is nothing sinful about matter. That is a heresy of all heresies. And there have been plenty of Catholics who've been guilty of it, but the church never has. And so here we have a man in the first century speaking as a Catholic on route to Rome to Mardin. And he describes what's going to happen to him.
He knew it. And that's a long trip. He was in the company of these Roman soldiers. I asked myself, why did they bother taking him all the way from Syria, all the way to Rome just to feed him to a bunch of wild animals? What an expense.
But I guess it was just the ordinary working of a bureaucracy. They had them in those days too, you know. And so, we have here today Saint Ignatius, a man of our time who insists upon doctrine, upon what you believe, and then what do you do about it. The unity of faith and what a witness he is to the church of his day, to the gospels, to the epistles of Saint Paul, to the organization of the church. This is only sixty or seventy years from that Christ's death.
Ignatius very likely, personally knew some of the disciples or apostles. No doubt or there's scarcely any doubt about it. And here we have that continuity. And you either belong to the church of Saint Ignatius or you don't belong to the church of Christ. That was the great point of Newman's decision.
Newman came to see this, that there is no middle course. And so, he resolved by putting his faith in Rome. Name of father and the son, holy spirit. Amen.