Comparing St. Ignatius's Letter To The West

St. Ignatius of Antioch, during the persecutions of Christians, was arrested near the coast of the Mediterranean. Under the guard of the Romans, he was being taken to the capital in Rome, where he would later become a martyr. On his way to Rome, he urged other Christians to stay out of the way and not to intervene with the Roman guards. St. Ignatius of Antioch did not want to be saved by his fellow Christians, but by God. He was looking forward to his death so that he can final reach Christ. He wanted “to die in union with Christ’s passion,” he wanted to suffer just as Christ suffered on the cross. In St. Ignatius’s letters, it was clear that he was whole heartedly devoted in mind and in heart toward Christ. He says, “By their mistreatment
I become more of a disciple through not for that reason I am justified (Corinthians 4:4). We wanted to be put to death as a way to “attain Jesus Christ,” and he even said that he would force the Romans to kill him if he had to. By far, the biggest obstacle faced by Christians in the first centuries was that they could be arrested, and even put to death, on the sole reason that they were a Christian. Others did not like this revolutionary movement of Christians, and it was clearly shown. Anybody who was a Christian was considered to be a threat to the Romans. Without any evidence, they were called cannibals, assumed to be incestuous, and even at one point they would be killed just for participating in any act on public worship. They did not know what these Christians were about, and were probably scared of them, so to fix that, Christians were observed and considered very suspicious. For almost anything they did, even just claiming to be a Christian, could mean imprisonment or even death.
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