Welcome back to Timis Pope Pri. I'm Joe Heschmire. And last episode, I mentioned this.

I'm really looking forward to just doing an episode on how Gregory of Nissa shows the Eucharist

is connected to bodily resurrection and glorification because it's incredible.

Yes, Joe, I agree with you. The early Christians were convinced that the Eucharist was key

to our rising from the dead.

And at first blush, that idea seems pretty strange, even to Catholics.

And yet, we find this connection being made over and over again by the earliest of Christians,

even seemingly by Jesus himself.

So today I want to explore this question in two parts.

Number one, where do we find the early Christians making this connection? And number two, why?

Now, as a quick side note, you know, this is one of the reasons why I'm so incredibly grateful

to those of you over on my Patreon, shamelessjo.com, because it's your financial support,

which makes it possible for me to both share the gospel and also just geek out about beautiful parts

of the Christian faith like this. You know, even researching and writing and recording these short

episodes, it takes me a long time. And it's your generous support, which enables me to do it without

having to live and die by YouTube's algorithm. Plus, you're an incredible community. I mean,

look at this delightful story from Andre about how her two-year-old learned to say, God bless you by imitating the ends of my episodes. I love it. Now, for the rest of you, if you'd like to join, there's plenty of room for you over at Shamelessjo.com. But now, let's get back to this curious connection. You know, right around the year 107, St. Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, has been arrested, and he's being taken to Rome to be martyred. But the Romans tended not to feed prisoners very much. Now, this helps to explain several things you might encounter. For instance, Jesus' stress on visiting the imprisoned. If you leave them to themselves, they could die.

It's also why the Roman governor of Felix permitted Christians to take care of St. Paul in prison.

St. Ignatius is being escorted under Roman Guard to Rome from Syria.

He's visited by Christians from the churches of Asia Minor, the area that we now know as Turkey.

And he writes to these Christians about some of the difficulties

that they're facing. In particular, he writes to the Christians of Smyrna, and he warns them about

...