The Crown of Lions: St. Ignatius and the Triumph of the Cross by Jeff Callaway

The Crown of Lions: St. Ignatius and the Triumph of the Cross

by Jeff Callaway
Texas Outlaw Poet

In the cradle of ancient Syria, where the Orontes River weaves like a silver thread through the sun-scorched plains of Antioch, a child named Ignatius entered the world around 35 AD, under the shadow of Rome’s iron grip and the dawning light of a faith that would remake empires. Antioch, that pulsing heart of the East—third only to Rome and Alexandria—thrummed with life: merchants haggling in Greek, Syrian priests chanting to forgotten gods, Jewish scribes poring over sacred scrolls, and the first Christians whispering of a risen King. Tradition, bold as a prophet’s cry, holds that Ignatius was the child Jesus lifted in His arms, as Mark’s Gospel sings: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” Whether truth or sacred poetry, this image burns bright—a boy touched by divine hands, destined to carry the fire of Christ through a world of stone and blood.

Ignatius grew in a city where truth wrestled with lies, where the Gospel’s fragile seed took root amid pagan altars and imperial decrees. Here, in this crucible of cultures, he heard the call of Christ young, his heart ignited by the preaching of apostles. He sat at the feet of John the Evangelist, whose words of love and incarnation pierced like arrows. With Polycarp, his brother-in-arms, Ignatius drank deeply from the well of apostolic truth: the Word made flesh, the Eucharist as life’s bread, the Church as Christ’s living body. His soul, forged in these early years, became a blade—sharp with conviction, tempered by love, unyielding against the heresies that stalked the faithful like wolves in the night.

By the late 60s, as Nero’s fires consumed martyrs and Jerusalem’s walls crumbled under Titus’s siege, Ignatius stepped into the mantle of Antioch’s bishop. Third in line—after Peter, the rock, and Evodius, his successor—he took the helm around 69 or 70 AD, some say by Peter’s own hand, a charge that bound him to the apostolic chain. For nearly four decades, he stood as a sentinel, guarding his flock through the tempests of persecution. Domitian’s wrath in the 90s lashed the Church, yet Ignatius burned brighter, his voice a beacon in the darkness, calling the weary to hope, the faltering to courage. He saw the Church not as a mere gathering but as a sacred unity, a body breathing with Christ’s own life, its pulse the Eucharist, its spine the bishop’s authority. Two shadows loomed over his flock: Judaizers, chaining the Gospel to old laws, demanding circumcision and Sabbath rites while scorning the New Testament; and Docetists, denying Christ’s true flesh, calling His passion a phantom’s play. Ignatius met them with a lion’s roar: the New Covenant fulfills the Old; Jesus, born of Mary, suffered in truth, died in truth, rose in truth. “There is one Physician,” he would write, “who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible—even Jesus Christ our Lord.” His faith was no theory—it was a fire, consuming doubt, forging salvation from the raw iron of sacrifice.

His theology sang of Jesus as the eternal Word, God veiled in human skin, who walked dusty roads, broke bread with sinners, and bled on a cross to shatter death’s chains. Faith, for Ignatius, was love in action—love that binds, love that endures, love that dares to die. The Eucharist was his heart’s anthem: “the medicine of immortality,” Christ’s real flesh and blood, offered to heal a broken world. Against Docetist lies, he proclaimed its truth: “They abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His goodness, raised up again.” The Church, he named “Catholic”—universal, whole, one—its unity rooted in the bishop: “Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” He saw a divine order: the bishop as God’s image, presbyters as apostles, deacons as Christ’s servants. Schism was betrayal; pride was poison. He urged the Lord’s Day over the Sabbath, a sign of resurrection’s dawn, and called for humility, prayer, and love to hold the Body together.

When Trajan, flush with conquests over Scythians and Dacians, decreed in 107 or 110 AD that all must sacrifice to pagan gods or face death, Antioch trembled. Ignatius, ever the shepherd, stood defiant, shielding his people until the emperor’s gaze fell upon him. Dragged before Trajan in the city, he faced the imperial storm with a heart ablaze. Accused of rebellion, he declared himself a bearer of God, his lips confessing Christ crucified. The verdict was merciless: to Rome, to the arena, to the jaws of beasts. Bound in chains, guarded by ten soldiers— “leopards,” he called them, snarling fiercer with kindness—he began a journey that was both ordeal and triumph. From Antioch’s port at Seleucia, he likely sailed to Tarsus or Attalia, then trekked through Asia Minor’s rugged heart. At Laodicea on the Lycus, his captors veered north through Philadelphia and Sardis to Smyrna, a detour that stretched months, testing body and soul with chains, hunger, and the looming specter of death.

Yet the road became a pilgrimage of glory. Word of his courage spread like wildfire, and Christians met him with reverence, their tears mingling with his chains. In Smyrna, Polycarp, his old friend, embraced him, kissing the irons as sacred relics. Bishops and deacons from Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles—Onesimus, Damas, Polybius—gathered, offering solace and seeking his words. Here, Ignatius poured his soul into four letters, scrawled in urgent Greek, pulsing with the rhythm of Paul and the depth of John. To the Ephesians, he sang of unity: “Run together as into one temple of God, as to one altar, as to one Jesus Christ.” He warned of Docetists, exalted the Eucharist, and urged ceaseless prayer. To the Magnesians: shun Judaizing myths, honor the bishop, keep the Lord’s Day. To the Trallians: obey the hierarchy, flee pride, embrace humility. His letter to the Romans, dated August 24, was a cry from the heart: “Suffer me to be 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.” He pleaded for no rescue, longing to be one with Christ in death.

From Smyrna, the journey pressed to Troas, a briefer pause before sailing. Deacons Philo and Agathopus brought news of Antioch’s peace—persecution eased, divisions healed. Ignatius rejoiced, urging Polycarp to send envoys, and penned three more letters. To the Philadelphians: avoid schism, cling to one Eucharist, for “there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ.” To the Smyrnaeans: revere Polycarp, reject Docetists. To Polycarp: “Stand firm as does an anvil which is beaten,” with counsel on marriages, heresies, and pastoral love. These seven epistles, bridges between apostles and Fathers, pulse with military metaphors and fervent charity. Extant in short (Syriac), middle (authentic Greek/Latin), and long (interpolated) forms, their truth, upheld by scholars like Lightfoot, shines through debates of later forgery.

From Troas, Ignatius sailed to Neapolis in Macedonia, then marched through Philippi—where Polycarp later sought his fate—across Illyria, perhaps embarking from Dyrrhachium to Italy’s shore. Rome awaited, its Colosseum a crucible of blood and glory. Thrown to lions, as Eusebius and Jerome attest, his body was consumed entirely, as he prayed, leaving no burden for his friends. Martyred around 110 AD, Ignatius won his crown, his soul ascending in a hymn of victory. His relics, carried by Philo and Agathopus to Antioch, rested near Daphne’s groves until Theodosius II enshrined them in a converted temple; in 637, they found a home in Rome’s Basilica di San Clemente. Honored as Apostolic Father and “Doctor of Unity,” his feast lights October 17 in the West, December 20 in the East, a patron against throat ailments, revered in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran hearts.

Ignatius’s life—from a Syrian cradle to a Roman arena—was a hymn to Christ’s love, a defiant stand against a world that worshipped power and lies. His faith was no quiet piety but a blazing rebellion, choosing chains over compromise, truth over comfort, the cross over the crowd. He lived for a Savior who was no distant deity but a man of flesh, born of Mary, crucified under Pilate, risen in glory. His letters, his chains, his blood proclaim a Gospel that demands everything: faith that dares, love that endures, unity that binds. In his death, he became most alive, a witness to the eternal truth that Christ’s victory is ours, if we but follow.

Ignatius’s cry from the chains echoes still. Across nineteen centuries his voice breaks through the smoke of pagan altars and the roar of beasts to reach a world that again bows to idols—money, self, power, lust, pride. He would look at our glittering cities and see the same Rome: a people entertained to death, kneeling not before stone gods but glowing screens. He would see comfort enthroned where courage once stood. And from his cell he would whisper the same call he shouted to the Romans: “Do not save me from suffering. Let me be ground as wheat for the bread of Christ.”

We have forgotten how to bleed for truth. Our generation has turned discipleship into convenience, the cross into a logo. But Ignatius reminds us that love is proved not by sentiment but by sacrifice. He chose the teeth of lions over the applause of emperors. He walked with chains that sang like psalms because he knew the secret every saint learns: there is no crown without a cross.

He lived the truth that the faith is not an opinion—it is a Person. Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, not a symbol or memory but flesh and blood reality. Ignatius’s letters tremble with this certainty. “There is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he wrote, “and one cup unto unity of His blood.” He staked his life on that mystery. In a world of heresy and half-truths, he clung to the incarnate Lord who walked, hungered, wept, and rose again. When the world mocked him, he answered with a hymn: My Love is crucified.

He knew that unity was not an optional ornament of faith. “Where the bishop is, there is the Catholic Church,” he declared. Not a scattering of opinions, not a democracy of doctrines, but one Body gathered around the Eucharistic Lord. Against the fragmentation of his age, he lifted high the banner of oneness—a oneness rooted not in compromise but in Christ’s own flesh.

Look around today and see how the same disease of division spreads. Christians fracture over pride and politics, while the world perishes for want of light. Ignatius stands in the ruins like a prophet, pointing to the ancient cure: obedience, humility, love. “Flee from pride,” he told the Trallians, “and embrace humility.” The Church he died for was not an institution of power but a communion of mercy, a field hospital where sinners find grace and the broken find purpose.

He died not with despair but with joy. Listen to his last words before the arena: “Now I begin to be a disciple.” Think of that—after decades as bishop, preacher, confessor, he saw his martyrdom as the beginning, not the end. For in that moment, chained and hungry, he became most like the Christ he adored. The beasts tore his body, but they could not touch his soul. The lions fed on flesh, but Heaven feasted on his faith.

And what of us? We, who walk in a century more cunning than Rome, more cruel in its indifference? The world tells us faith is a hobby, truth is relative, sin is outdated. Ignatius’s blood says otherwise. It cries out that eternity is real, that heaven and hell are not metaphors, that Christ still reigns. His chains invite us to throw off our own invisible ones—the chains of addiction, cynicism, despair—and follow the narrow road.

You, reader, are not too far gone. You are not too stained, too jaded, too modern for mercy. The same Savior who met Ignatius in the dungeon waits for you now. He does not promise comfort. He promises meaning. He does not promise ease. He promises resurrection.

Come home to the faith of the martyrs. Come home to the Church that Ignatius called “Catholic,” the Church of Peter and Paul, of saints and sinners, of bread and wine that become Body and Blood. Step into the confessional and lay your sins at the feet of the Crucified. Receive absolution. Taste the mercy that cost God His life. Kneel before the altar and behold the Lamb—silent, humble, present.

This is not nostalgia. It is revolution. The true rebellion in an age of lies is sanctity. The real counterculture is holiness. The world burns; build altars. The empire mocks; sing hymns. The mob sneers; forgive them. That is how Ignatius fought Rome and won—not with sword or slogan, but with love that refused to die.

And if you are weary, if you think faith is a dream that belongs to braver souls, remember him. Remember the old man in chains who smiled at his executioners. Remember that courage is born in communion, not isolation. Join the Body. Stand with the saints. Live and die as Ignatius did—with Christ’s name on your lips and His peace in your heart.

Let his example light your darkness. Let his fire burn away your fear. For this world offers only dust; Christ offers forever. Choose today whom you will serve. As Ignatius chose lions over lies, choose truth over comfort. Choose the nail-pierced hands stretched out to you now.

Fall to your knees. Whisper His name. Let every wound and failure become the doorway to grace. Say with the martyrs, I am the wheat of God. Let the Spirit grind away your pride until only love remains. Then rise a new creation—Catholic, apostolic, alive. Preach the Gospel not with timid words but with your very life. The world is starving for witnesses. Be bread for it.

And when the darkness closes in, hold fast to the faith of Antioch, the faith of Rome, the faith of saints who would rather die than deny their King. Let their courage flow through your veins like new blood. For the Church still marches, one Eucharist, one voice, one hope: Christ and Him crucified.

Ignatius has gone before us into glory, but his challenge still stands: “Faith and love are everything—nothing is preferable to them.” So take up your cross, brother. Shoulder it, sister. Walk the road to Calvary. There, at the foot of the Cross, the world begins again.

“Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” — Revelation 2:10

~ by Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

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