By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint Ignatius was a successor of the Holy Apostles and served as Bishop of Antioch. Together with Saint Polycarp, the president of the Church of the Smyrnaeans, he was a disciple of the Evangelist John the Theologian. He was therefore brought before Emperor Trajan, and after enduring every kind of torture without yielding, he was sent to Rome to be thrown to the beasts. When this took place, certain Christian men gathered his holy relics and brought them from Rome to Antioch, offering them to the Antiochene brethren who desired them with great longing. They then placed them beneath the earth with all honor and reverence. For this reason the Church celebrates a joyful feast.
We encountered Saint Ignatius the God-bearer — indeed, in considerable detail — on the day of his commemoration, the 20th of December. At that time, we had the opportunity to emphasize, on the one hand, the theological stature of the letters he left us — a truly significant contribution to overcoming ecclesiastical distortions — and, on the other hand, his deep love and fervor for the Lord Jesus Christ. It is precisely this love that the hymns of our Church also highlight today, on the occasion of the translation of his honorable relics. Indeed, it is impossible to speak of Saint Ignatius on any occasion without being moved by the furnace of his heart, which burned for the sake of Christ.
By way of example, from the doxastika of Vespers:
“God-bearer Ignatius, you embraced Christ, your beloved.”
And again:
“Most blessed Ignatius! For having an unwavering desire toward your true Beloved, you would say: ‘There is not within me a fire that loves material things, but rather living water speaking within me, saying: Come to the Father.’”
And from the Canon of Matins:
“Having fallen in love with the beauty of the Master, and having an unyielding longing toward Him,” that is, “You loved the beauty of Christ the Master and desired Him without compromise.”
And again:
“O blessed one, the most divine eros took complete possession of your soul.”
Saint Theophanes the Hymnographer connects the Saint’s love for Christ directly with his martyrdom. He considers the Saint’s desire for martyrdom to be the reward he received from God precisely because of that love and of his service to the Church in ministering the Gospel of Christ.
“Having embraced Christ, your beloved, you received as the reward of your priestly service of the gospel of Christ the perfection accomplished through blood,” that is, “You held Christ, your beloved, upon your breast, and as the reward for your ministry of His gospel you attained perfection through the martyrdom of blood.”
In other words, martyrdom — something regarded as the worst fate by one who thinks in worldly rather than Christian terms — is the grace given by God by which a person ascends to perfection, as the Apostle Paul himself states: “To you it has been granted not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Phil. 1:29). And this occurs because, as we have emphasized elsewhere, martyrdom in this life — not only the shedding of blood, but also the various afflictions and trials endured with faith by the Christian — constitutes participation in the martyrdom of the First Martyr, the Lord Himself. His life is a Cross, and the life of the Christian is also a cross, insofar as he “follows in His footsteps.” It is therefore no coincidence that our Church characterizes Saint Ignatius as “an imitator of the Passion of Christ.”
We cannot fail to mention also a parallel drawn by Saint Theophanes concerning the Hieromartyr of Christ. In the oikos of the kontakion, he likens him to the Prophet Jeremiah, whom God sanctified from his mother’s womb in order to proclaim His coming into the world. And when God Himself came into the world, He found the infant Ignatius worthy of His grace — by which the Hymnographer likely alludes to the tradition preserved by the Church, namely that the child whom the Lord took into His arms and declared that one must become like such a child to enter the Kingdom of God was Saint Ignatius — so that he might later become a herald of His gospel.
“The God who sanctified Jeremiah from his mother’s womb, and who, as the Foreknower, knew even before his birth that he would be a vessel of the Holy Spirit, immediately filled him with that Spirit from his youth and sent him as a prophet and preacher to all, to proclaim beforehand His holy presence upon the earth. When that same God was born of the Virgin and came to preach, He found, from infancy, a worthy herald of His grace: the God-bearer and divine Ignatius.”
Thus we may say that in saints such as Saint Ignatius we see the continuation of the great figures of the Old Testament — the Patriarchs and the Prophets. What we read in the Old Testament about their spiritual endowment and grace we see directly before us in our saints, and perhaps even more so, since our saints were granted the blessing of living in ontological immediacy with Christ, as members sanctified by Him.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
“The God who sanctified Jeremiah from his mother’s womb, and who, as the Foreknower, knew even before his birth that he would be a vessel of the Holy Spirit, immediately filled him with that Spirit from his youth and sent him as a prophet and preacher to all, to proclaim beforehand His holy presence upon the earth. When that same God was born of the Virgin and came to preach, He found, from infancy, a worthy herald of His grace: the God-bearer and divine Ignatius.”
Thus we may say that in saints such as Saint Ignatius we see the continuation of the great figures of the Old Testament — the Patriarchs and the Prophets. What we read in the Old Testament about their spiritual endowment and grace we see directly before us in our saints, and perhaps even more so, since our saints were granted the blessing of living in ontological immediacy with Christ, as members sanctified by Him.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
