The story of St. Ignatius of Antioch is well known. Martyred in the early second century, the disciple of John the Evangelist turned himself over to the Emperor Trajan while the latter was visiting his diocese of Antioch. Why he turned himself over, whether for an opportunity to preach the Faith to the Emperor or as a ransom for his sheep that were being attacked by gnostic wolves or even both, is not known. What is known is that the Emperor had him sent to Rome to be a part of the “entertainment” of the Roman Circus. Along a truly prolonged Way of the Cross from Antioch to Rome, the Bishop of Antioch wrote seven personal letters to the churches that he passed through including a moving letter to the Romans asking them not to hinder his martyrdom in any way. His letters have been preserved in their entirety for us and offer us an important glimpse into the life of the early Church. But even more valuable is the spiritual patrimony the sainted Bishop left in what each of these exhortations have in common—a deeply moving Eucharistic spirituality.
Ignatius’ Faith
St. Ignatius offers us one of the earliest professions of faith in the Real Presence. In his letter to the Smyrnaens he declares that “the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His loving-kindness raised from the dead” (7). While statements such as these abound throughout the each of the letters, it becomes clear that this is no mere intellectual assent on the part of St. Ignatius. Instead it is a real faith; a faith that sees Jesus in the “breaking of the bread” and knows Him through it. For Ignatius, the Eucharist is simply the visible presence of the Son of God, no less real than His presence as Jesus of Nazareth was some 70 years prior.
How do we know this? Because he repeatedly expresses his desire to be martyred in Eucharistic terms. Summarizing his desire in his last letter to the Romans he says, “I write to the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God, unless you hinder me. I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Allow me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ” (4). In short St. Ignatius desired to imitate Christ—not just His bodily crucifixion—but in the manner he knows Him, the Eucharist. And in this regard, the Saint offers us a stirring example of how to imitate Christ.
The Imitation of Christ
At the heart of the Christian life is the imitation of Christ. We are to “put on Christ” and to be more and more conformed to His likeness by imitating His virtues. The problem however is that we did not witness His specific acts of virtue. We know of them, but we do not necessarily know what they looked like, making imitation difficult. Imitation without sight is very difficult, if not impossible. Perfection is found in the details. It is impossible except for one thing. We do witness Christ’s virtues. We witness them each and every time that we encounter Him in the Eucharist. And this is what St. Ignatius found. He did not see Christ in His human nature, but he did see the same Christ in His sacramental garb. He didn’t just see Him, but He witnessed His actions. He did not see the Eucharist as a poster of Jesus, but a living and acting Person. And seeing Him this way, Ignatius desired to imitate Him.
St. Peter Julian Eymard, the great saint of the Eucharist, writing centuries later summarizes what Ignatius intuitively grasped.
“This Eucharistic manifestation must be the starting point of all the actions of our life. All our virtues must come from the Eucharist. For instance, you wish to practice humility: see how Jesus practices it in the Blessed Sacrament. Start with this knowledge, this Eucharistic light, and then go to the Crib if you wish, or to Calvary. Your going thither will be easier because it is natural for the mind to proceed from the known to the unknown. In the Blessed Sacrament you have our Lord’s humility right before your eyes. It will be much easier for you to conclude from His actual humility to that of His birth or of any other circumstance in His life…Let our sole spiritual concern be to contemplate the Eucharist and find in it the example of what we have to do in every circumstance of our Christian life.”
(The Real Presence, 35).
St. Peter Julian says we start with the known, Christ’s virtues in the Eucharist, and then proceed to the unknown, His virtuous acts throughout His earthly sojourn. In a very real way, the Eucharist is given as a display of those virtues so that we may imitate them. Not only that, but through the Eucharist, we commune with Christ and His same virtues are infused into us. So it is not just that we imitate Christ under our own impulse, but the Eucharist empowers us to do so. And this is why St. Ignatius saw himself not just as imitating Son of God made man, but Son of God made man made Eucharist.
All of Christ’s virtues are on display and available to us, but there are three that are most manifest and worthy of particular mention. It is not an accident that these three are the same three upon which the spiritual life hinges: humility, meekness, and poverty.
Just as Our Lord made Himself subject to the laws of human nature in order to come to us, He now makes Himself subject to the laws of food in order to do the same. He is the absolute model of humility in the Eucharist. He suppresses His divinity even more than He did during the Incarnation; for who could believe that the God of the Universe would make Himself food! He becomes lifeless and motionless. He allows Himself to become a prisoner and makes Himself so tiny that He becomes “trapped” in even the smallest particle. He does not shout out His presence and allows Himself to be completely forgotten, even by those closest to Him. He can be carried away wherever someone else wills, even to places where He does not will to go. See for yourself if Our Lord does not put flesh to the Litany of Humility in His Eucharistic abasement!
It is His humility that yields the fruit of His meekness. “The meekness of Jesus,” St. Peter Julian says, “scored its greatest triumph in His virtue of silence.” He “suffers” in silence as He is ridiculed and mocked. The “bruised reed He will not break” when He suffers sacrilege by those who receive Him unworthily or by those Prelates who allow or even encourage repeated sacrileges. The “smoldering wick He will not extinguish” when the King of the Universe is met by indifference and laxity in approaching Him. He waits patiently inside dark and empty churches for visits from those who love Him.
The Eucharistic Poverello appears with absolutely nothing but Himself. He suppresses all the powers of His glorified humanity and paralyzes His human powers. He chose what was poorest and most simple, bread and wine, for His garb. Then He “traps” His divinity inside their appearance. His throne is tiny, so much so that many people don’t even acknowledge it. He is not just poor because He has nothing, but because He shed it all to make us rich. He gives us something of our “own” so that we have something to give to God. That is true poverty.
The imitation of Christ is the summation of the spiritual life. Let us learn to imitate Him by imitating Ignatius imitating the Eucharistic Jesus!