By Fr. George Dorbarakis
We will not dwell on the truly God-inspired poetic conceptions of the great hymnographer of our Church, Saint Andrew of Crete, concerning Saint Ignatius the God-bearer. That is, we will not insist on the connection he attempts to make between Christmas and the feast of the Saint (“The light-bearing day of your radiant contests proclaims to all Him who was born of the Virgin; for thirsting out of longing to delight exceedingly in Him, you hastened to be consumed by wild beasts”), nor on the parallel he draws between him and the Patriarch Abraham, wishing to emphasize the magnitude of his sacrifice and once again finding occasion to refer to the event of Christ’s Nativity (“Abraham once sacrificed his son, prefiguring the slaughter of Him who holds all things and who now hastens to be born in a cave; but you, O God-minded one, offered your whole self as a sacrifice to your Creator”). Nor yet will we refer to his remarkable inspiration of an abstract kind, seeing on the one hand the jaws of the lions as the Saint’s executioners, and on the other their entrails and stomachs as his tomb: “Let the teeth of the beasts, he says, become for me swords and rhomphaia and slaughter; and let the entrails of the lions be my tomb.”
What above all is worth emphasizing more than anything else in the life in Christ of Saint Ignatius is what Saint Andrew of Crete notes, wishing to show the twofold dimension of his work and consequently his contribution to the Church: his martyrdom and his pastoral ministry. “Let Ignatius be praised, the great Priest, crowned in two ways, as Martyr and as Shepherd.” Why the emphasis chiefly on his martyrdom and his pastoral ministry? Because, on the one hand, he was that apostolic father who theologized about martyrdom as an event that constitutes a response of love and eros to the love and eros of God Himself in Christ. Christian martyrdom — that is, the sacrifice of oneself for the sake of steadfastness in the faith of Christ — is not a one-sided initiative of a human being, even one faithful to something, but is the natural stance of a person who has felt within his very existence the infinite love of the Creator toward him. This is what the Apostle John the Theologian, the teacher of Saint Ignatius, noted: “We love because He first loved us.” Christ first loved us; He first sacrificed Himself for us; and then, by His power, we are able to love Him and even to sacrifice ourselves for Him. The same was expressed by the Apostle Paul, when he emphasized that we believers know Christ — that is, we stand toward Him in love, for love brings knowledge — because He first knew us, that is, loved us: “Having known God, or rather having been known by Him.”
The emphasis on love for Christ, as a fervent eros toward Him, constitutes the core of Saint Ignatius’s existence in Christ. We are not speaking of a simple turning of mind and heart toward Him; we are not speaking of mere sympathy. Such states are considered only the first steps, which greatly diminish what Saint Ignatius felt. His love for Christ — literally a fire heated to the utmost — can be compared only with the corresponding sentiments and spiritual experiences of the Apostles John and Paul. It is no accident that he was characterized as a continuer of these two great Apostles, who lived in a relationship of identification with Christ Himself. For this reason the Holy Hymnographer does not cease, throughout the greater part of the Service he composed, to praise precisely this fervent eros of the Saint for the Lord.
“You who were wounded by perfect love, when the blazing eros was inflaming your soul, O most sacred one, urging you, Father, to hasten toward the Master.”
“Always fervent in spirit, the hieromartyr cried out with longing amid dangers: I pursue Christ with joy; I am crucified with Christ; and I no longer live, but, he says, Christ alone lives in me.”
“I hasten to become Christ’s; Christ alone do I desire; for I am wholly Christ’s, you cried out, O athlete; Him I pursue, Him I am eager to reach; and for this reason fire and sword and beasts I endure, all of them, in order that I may attain Him.”
And besides the martyrdom, Saint Andrew of Crete also emphasizes the pastoral ministry of the Hieromartyr Ignatius. Saint Ignatius was the shepherd who theologized precisely for the sake of his flock. And indeed he was a true shepherd, because what he taught he first lived, reaching even the point of sacrificing himself for the sake of Christ and of his faithful, according to the word of the Lord Himself: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” We see this sacrificial love reflected in his exquisite epistles, of New Testament stature. Through the letters left by the Holy Hieromarty — fruits of his final days, on his journey to Rome and to his martyrdom — he lays bare his very soul and the depth of his love for Christ, as we have said, and for his brothers in Christ. In them we see the true great priest Ignatius, offering himself liturgically, presenting himself as a sacrifice to Christ — like wheat ground by the teeth of beasts and inflamed by the fire of love, offered as pure bread before Christ. “I am the wheat of the Creator, and by the teeth of beasts I must surely be ground, so that I may appear as the purest bread to the Word, our God.”
Yet the letters of Saint Ignatius are not only a monument to his love for Christ. Within them are also contained the views that supported the Church at a time when it was endangered by various deniers.
“Imitating, Ignatius, the dangers that Paul faced in various places, and being a prisoner, you did not grow weary, but with frequent letters strengthened the Churches of Christ.”
“Even while a prisoner you did not cease strengthening the Churches, sending letters from each city to all the hierarchs of Christ, urging them to be courageous.”
Saint Andrew, of course, by the very nature of his task — to praise Saint Ignatius — does not specify, beyond the Saint’s love for Christ, his other truths and exhortations. And yet what Ignatius emphasized truly became a support that saved the Church from the dangers of the heretics: the position of the bishop as the visible center of the Church; therefore the unity of the Church that exists through the bishop who holds the place of Christ; and participation in the one Divine Eucharist, which the Bishop celebrates in every place. The theology of Saint Ignatius — the first serious theology of the Church after the Apostles — is indeed majestic. The Holy Hymnographer, however, as we said, though well acquainted with this theology, does not have the “luxury” of offering it as a hymn to the fullness of the faithful. It suffices for him — and it suffices for us as well — the warmth we receive from the God-bearing Saint, the Hieromartyr Ignatius. (Is it accidental, after all, that his very name, Ignatius, comes from the Latin "ignis," meaning fire?) His eros for Christ, moreover, was such that it overshadowed — and continues to overshadow — everything.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
