Segue to Sanctity
If the Office of Unity, symbolized by a sitting bishop, is necessary to the maintenance of faith, then holiness of life is the reason for it.
If the Office of Unity, symbolized by a sitting bishop, is necessary to the maintenance of faith, then holiness of life is the reason for it.
Contrary to some modern protests, there exists a norm or standard of right reason which applies to everyone in every place and time.
For all the outward hostility of the pagan world to the Church, it is as nothing compared to the threat from within.
Life is a mystery to be lived and, not infrequently, endured, which is what makes it so profound and persisting a drama.
When theologians withhold their assent from all that the Church has consistently taught from the very beginning until now, they pretty much leave everything in ruins.
According to St. Ignatius of Antioch, the bishop occupies a seat of governance no less authoritative than that of God Himself.
The Hedgehog knows one big thing, but our Synod Fathers (and Mothers) seemed consumed with many lesser things.
The Synod was a series of fixations on matters of utter inconsequence, rather like the deck hands busily arranging chairs on the Titanic before its final plunge into the sea.
St. Ignatius of Antioch implores the good Christians of Magnesia not “to be led astray by wrong views or by outmoded tales that count for nothing.”
Same-sex unions are not even unions, only a parody, both sad and sterile, of a relation that is not real.
We must draw upon the Blessed Mother, the conqueror of all heresies, in response to the busybodies running the Synod show.
St. Ignatius of Antioch sounds the great theme of unity, especially around the person of the bishop, the visible sign of God’s presence and power in this world.
The Synod organizers themselves don’t really know where any of this is going, but we’re all supposed to be on the way anyway.
Where in the correspondence of St. Ignatius of Antioch can one find an ideal point of entry?
If education is not to be a matter of merely filling buckets which happen to be empty, but of lighting fires that have gone out, how are we to set them blazing again?
Of the seven letters of St. Ignatius, all written in great haste along the way from Antioch to Rome, the first in the order of importance, as well as the longest, was the letter sent to the Ephesians.
The life of St. Ignatius of Antioch was connected to other great figures in the early Church, not least being St. John the Evangelist.
It was not in defense of any sort of abstract principle that drove St. Ignatius of Antioch to such an extremity as to choose death, despising even the most cruel and pitiless of its torments.
St. Ignatius of Antioch’s life, writings, and death all point us to the purpose of life: to be converted to Christ.