TO KNOW OUR CATHOLIC FAITH

 
     TO KNOW OUR CATHOLIC FAITH
 
              St. Ignatius of Antioch
 
                (quote taken from
www.catholicculture.org/culture/library)
 
 

This Sunday, October 17, is the feast day of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was consecrated bishop by St. Peter. In his letter to St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, St. Ignatius was  the first person to put the term Catholic Church in writing, in 107 A.D. This letter was written on St. Ignatius’ way to Rome, where he was to be martyred for refusing to renounce his faith during Emperor Trajan’s reign. Also on his way to Rome, in a letter to the Philadelphians (who lived in modern-day Turkey), St. Ignatius wrote that Jesus Christ “firmly established His Church upon a rock, by a spiritual building, not made with hands, against which the winds and the floods have beaten, yet have not been able to overthrow....” 
 
Very Reverend W.C. Paysse, V.F.

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.

The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans