Today, October 17, is the memorial of Saint Ignatius of Antioch.
Bishop, Martyr & Church Father.
Ignatius, also known as Ignatius Theophorus (God-bearing) or Ignatius Nurono (fire-bearer), was a convert from paganism to Christianity. He succeeded Saint Peter the Apostle as bishop of Antioch, Syria. He also served during the persecution of Domitian.
In his lifetime, he wrote a series of encouraging letters to the churches under his care.
He is widely recognized as one of the church’s earliest martyrs. Those letters he wrote also served to document the quick development of the church hierarchy, covering early Christian theology, ecclesiology, the sacraments, and the role of bishops.
“Follow, all of you, the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father,” he wrote to Polycarp’s church at Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). “Where the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be; even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church,” he wrote. The instruction marked the first recorded use of the phrase “catholic (meaning, universal) church.”
His name occurs in the “Nobis quoque peccatoribus” in the Canon of the Mass.
During the persecution of Trajan, Ignatius was captured and brought to Rome—to be killed by wild beasts in the year 107.