Ignatius of Antioch: “In the Face of Their Fury, Be Gentle”

Saint Ignatius of Antioch was arrested by the Romans, taken in chains from his episcopal seat in Asia Minor, and ultimately executed in the Colosseum by being fed to “wild beasts” as part of a popular entertainment event in the year 110.

Violence and destruction were regular features of “show-business” in Rome in late antiquity. People developed a “taste” for the spectacle of watching other people being hunted down and subjected to a gruesome death in the arena. Somehow, they were able to forget their own humanity.

Dear people of our own time: how are we “entertained”? This question deserves some reflection on the part of all of us living 1900 years later. In front of the enormous technologically driven, hypersexualized, artificially violent “spectacles” of today, do we forget our own humanity?

In any case, Ignatius embraced this suffering for an entirely different reason. He longed to share in the Passion of Jesus Christ. And he met delegations and sent letters to the churches in Asia Minor that he passed through on his way to martyrdom. He exhorted the churches to be united in faith and charity under the leadership of their bishops. Thus they will begin to experience the participation in God’s life that is their destiny, and will be witnesses to the world of the mercy and love of God given through Jesus Christ in His Church.

Here are some selections from Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the church in Ephesus:

“When you heard that I was come from Syria in bonds for the Name and hope common to us all, and that I was hoping by your prayer to attain my purpose of fighting with wild beasts at Rome, that through my attaining I may be enabled to be a disciple, you were anxious to visit me. I received therefore your numerous body in the name of God in the person of Onesimus, whose love surpasses words, who is, besides, in the flesh your bishop. I pray that you may love him with a love according to Jesus Christ, and that you may all be like him. For blessed is He Who granted unto you, worthy as you are, to possess such a bishop….

“Hence it is fitting for you to set yourselves in harmony with the mind of the bishop, as indeed you do. For your noble presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted to the bishop, as the strings to a harp. And thus by means of your accord and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung. Form yourselves one and all into a choir, that blending in concord, taking the key-note of God, you may sing in unison with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, that He may hear you and recognize by means of your well-doing that you are members of His Son. Therefore it is profitable for you to live in unblameable unity, that you may be also partakers of God continually. For if I in a short space of time had such intercourse with your bishop, not after the common way of men, but after the spirit, how much more do I congratulate you, who are knit to him as closely as is the Church to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ to the Father, that all things may accord in unity.

“And for the rest of men pray unceasingly — for there is in them hope of repentance — that they may attain unto God. Suffer them therefore to learn discipleship at least from your works. In face of their outbursts of wrath be meek; in face of their boastful words be humble; meet their revilings with prayers; where they are in error, be steadfast in the faith; in face of their fury be gentle. Be not eager to retaliate upon them. Let our forbearance prove us their brethren. Let us endeavour to be imitators of the Lord, striving who can suffer the greater wrong… But in all purity and sobriety abide in Christ Jesus in flesh and in spirit.”

~Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Ephesians 1, 4-5, 10