You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Taylor Kemp. I'm the director of

formed, and with me is... Dr. Ben Acres, chief content officer here at the Augustine Institute.

Yes, and today we are talking about St. Ignatius of Antioch. Dr. Akers, what do we need to know

about St. Ignatius of Antioch? Many things. We're not going to cover all the things in our short 18-minute episode. But I just want to say he's one of my favorite saints. Okay. One of my favorite saints of all time. Yeah. He's a model of Christian discipleship. Okay. His martyrdom becomes kind of a manual for martyrdom, is how one Christian writer put it. But he's an early

church father. Yep. Okay. So he is also a doctor of the church. Okay. So he died. What we know

about him biographically is he died around 107. So we're talking very early church father. So possibly

birth date around 30. Wow. Yeah. We know from St. John Christostom, who is a bishop in Antioch,

so he's Ignatius of Antioch. Bishop later, St. John Christostom, many, you know, a couple hundred years later, said that Ignatius of Antioch had the C, was bishop for 40 years in Antioch. That's a long time. Wow. I kind of count that back. Yeah. UcS. is the early church historian. He says that Ignatius is the third bishop of Antioch. Do you know who the first bishop of Antioch is? No. St. Peter. So think of Acts, St. Peter of the Apostle. It's in Acts chapter 11 when the apostles, you know, apostles are scattering. They're going different places. Yep. Peter goes to Antioch. I remember that. He goes to Antioch. Antioch is the first place where... They're called Christians. Very good. And it's interesting. Ignatius is going to be the first... Ignatius of Antioch is going to be the first one to use the word Catholic for church. So Antioch is famous for that.

First time in place called Christian, first time called Catholic. So the Eusebius tells us that

Peter is the first bishop of Antioch. Evodius, who we don't know anything about, is the second

bishop, and then Ignatius is the third bishop. So how do we know anything about Ignatius? He's so old.

Yes. So Eusebius is a early Christian writer. He wrote what's called the history of the church.

And he tells us different stories about the lives of the apostles, some stories that aren't in Scripture.

So he tells us the stories about St. John, the Apostle and the evangelist and what the end of his life looked like.

But he also tells us what's happening in the first couple hundred years after Jesus' death.

Wow. Okay. And then we also know a little bit more just, rather than just being told about him, we have some...

Exactly. Right. We have seven letters that Ignatius writes to people and also churches on his way

to death in Rome.

So he's in Syria.

So he's in Asia Minor, and he's heading over towards Rome to face the Lions and be martyred.

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