The One Who Carries Christ

Not long ago, when Trajan came to the throne of the Romans, Ignatius — the disciple of the apostle John, and in every way a man of apostolic stamp — was guiding the church of Antioch with great care. He had barely come through the earlier storms of the many persecutions under Domitian. Like a good pilot, with the rudder of prayer and fasting, with the intensity of his teaching, and with unbroken spiritual labor, he had held out against the flood that ran at him, afraid of one thing only: that he might lose any of the faint-hearted, or of the more trusting sort. [a]

So he was glad of the church’s quiet, now that the persecution had let up for a while. But he was unhappy with himself, because he had not yet come to a true love for Christ, or reached the full rank of a disciple. He kept turning it over inwardly: the confession that is made by martyrdom would bring him into a closer bond with the Lord. So he stayed on with the church a few more years, lighting up everyone’s understanding like a lamp from God by his explanations of the Scriptures — and in the end he was given what he wanted.

For in the ninth year of his reign Trajan grew proud. He had beaten the Scythians and the Dacians and many nations besides, and he decided that the religious body of the Christians was the one thing still missing from his conquest of everything. So he threatened them with persecution unless they would agree to worship demons, as all the other nations did, and in this way he forced everyone who was living a godly life either to sacrifice to the idols or to die. And so Christ’s noble soldier, fearing for the church of Antioch, was brought before Trajan — which was what he himself wanted. Trajan was staying at Antioch at the time, but was in a hurry to set out against Armenia and the Parthians. [d]

When he was set in front of the emperor Trajan, the emperor said to him, “Who are you, you wretched spirit, so eager to break our commands and to talk others into doing the same, until they come to a miserable end?” Ignatius answered, “No one ought to call Theophorus wicked. Every evil spirit has left the servants of God. But if you mean that I am wicked toward those spirits, because I am their enemy, then I agree with you completely: I have Christ, the King of heaven, within me, and I wreck everything they contrive.” “And who is Theophorus?” “The man who has Christ in his breast.” “Do we not seem to you, then, to have gods in mind — the gods whose help we enjoy when we fight our enemies?” “You are mistaken when you call the demons of the nations gods. There is one God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them; and one Jesus Christ, the only Son of God — and may I come to enjoy his kingdom.” “You mean the one who was crucified under Pontius Pilate?” “I mean the one who crucified my sin, along with the one who invented it, and who has condemned all the deceit and malice of the devil and thrown it down under the feet of those who carry him in their heart.” “So you carry the crucified one about inside you?” “I do. For it is written, ‘I will live in them and walk among them.’ ”

Then Trajan passed sentence: “We order that Ignatius, who says he carries about within him the man who was crucified, be bound by soldiers and taken to the great city of Rome, to be eaten by the beasts, for the entertainment of the people.” When the holy martyr heard the sentence he cried out for joy, “Thank you, Lord, that you have thought me worthy of the honor of a complete love toward you, and have had me bound in iron chains like your apostle Paul.” With that he took the chains and put them on himself with delight. Then he prayed for the church and, in tears, entrusted it to the Lord — and the soldiers, brutal as animals, hurried him away, like a ram at the head of a fine flock, to be carried to Rome and served up as food for the blood-hungry beasts.

So he came down from Antioch to Seleucia in high spirits and full of joy, because he wanted to suffer; and from there he set sail. After a great deal of suffering he reached Smyrna, where he went ashore delighted, and hurried to see the holy Polycarp, who had once been his fellow student and was now overseer of Smyrna. The two of them had been disciples of the apostle John in the old days. Brought in to him, sharing some spiritual gifts with him, and glorying in his chains, he begged him to work alongside him so that what he wanted might be fulfilled. He asked it of the whole church, in fact — the cities and churches of Asia had welcomed the holy man through their overseers and elders and deacons, all hurrying out to meet him in the hope of receiving some spiritual gift from him — but he asked it above all of the holy Polycarp: that by way of the wild beasts he might vanish quickly from this world and be shown at last before the face of Christ. [k]

This is how he spoke, and this is what he testified to, stretching his love toward Christ as far as a man could who was about to secure heaven by his good confession — and stretching it too toward the earnestness of those who joined their prayers to his about the fight ahead of him. To pay the churches back for coming out to meet him through their leaders, he sent them letters of thanksgiving, letters that dripped with spiritual grace and carried prayer and encouragement with them. And so, seeing how warmly everyone felt toward him, and afraid that the love of the brothers might get in the way of his eagerness for the Lord while a fair door for suffering martyrdom stood open, he wrote the letter to the church of the Romans that is set down here. [m]

So by means of this letter he had settled, exactly as he wished, those of the brothers at Rome who were unwilling to have him die. He sailed from Smyrna — the soldiers were pressing Christophorus to hurry along to the public shows in the mighty city of Rome, so that he could be handed over to the wild beasts in front of the Roman people and win the crown he was after — and landed next at Troas. From there he went on to Neapolis, and traveled on foot by way of Philippi through Macedonia and on to the part of Epirus near Epidamnus. Finding a ship in one of the seaports there, he crossed the Adriatic, and out of it into the Tyrrhenian Sea, passing island after island and city after city, until Puteoli came in sight. He was eager to go ashore there, wanting to walk where the apostle Paul had walked. But a violent wind came up and would not let him: it drove the ship on from astern. [n]

So he only called the brothers of that place happy for their love, and sailed past. The wind stayed fair, and we were carried on against our will in a single day and night, grieving over the parting from this righteous man that was coming. For him it fell out just as he wished, since he was in a hurry to be gone from this world as soon as he could and to reach the Lord he loved. We sailed into the Roman harbor, and with the unholy games just about to close, the soldiers began to be irritated at how slow we were, while the overseer gladly gave in to their hurrying.

So they pushed on from the place called Portus. The story of everything to do with the holy martyr had already gotten about, and we met the brothers there full of fear and joy at once — glad, because they had been counted worthy to meet Theophorus; frightened, because so great a man was being led away to die. Some of them were boiling over and saying that they would talk the crowd around, so that it would not demand this just man’s destruction; he told them to keep quiet. He knew at once through the Spirit what they were about, and he greeted them all and begged them to show him a true love. He went on about it at greater length than he had in his letter, and persuaded them not to grudge him his hurry to the Lord. [q]

Then, with all the brothers kneeling beside him, he asked the Son of God on the churches’ behalf that the persecution might be stopped and that the brothers might go on loving one another. And with that he was hurried off into the amphitheater. He was thrown in at once, by an order Caesar had given some time before. The public shows were just about to close — it was a high day, as they reckoned it, the day called in Latin the thirteenth, when the people would turn out in more than the usual numbers — and so he was thrown to the wild beasts right beside the shrine. In this way the desire of the holy martyr Ignatius was fulfilled, according to what is written, “The desire of the righteous is welcome”; so that he would be no trouble to any of the brothers over the gathering up of his remains, which was what he had already said in his letter he wanted his end to be. In fact only the harder parts of his holy remains were left, and these were carried to Antioch and wrapped in linen — a treasure beyond price, left to the holy church by the grace that was in the martyr.

All this took place on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January — that is, the twentieth of December — when Sura and Senecio were consuls of the Romans for the second time. [u]

We were eyewitnesses of it ourselves. We spent the whole night indoors in tears, and on our knees we begged the Lord with much prayer to give us weak men some certainty about what had been done. Then, as we fell into a light sleep, it happened that some of us saw the blessed Ignatius standing suddenly beside us and embracing us; others saw him praying for us again; and others saw him dripping with sweat, as though he had just come from his great labor, and standing beside the Lord. When we had seen these things with great joy and had compared our several visions with one another, we sang God’s praise as the giver of everything good, and we called the holy man happy.

And now we have told you both the day and the time, so that we may gather at the season of his martyrdom and share in the company of this champion, this noble martyr of Christ, who trod the devil underfoot and finished the course he had wanted out of love for Christ, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Through him and with him be glory and power to the Father, with the Holy Spirit, forever. Amen.