St. Ignatius of Antioch

Who they were

Ignatius was the second or third bishop of Antioch, the city where believers were first called Christians, arrested in Trajan's persecution and marched across Asia Minor under a guard of ten soldiers he called his leopards.

The journey became one of the treasures of the early Church. At each stage delegations from local churches met him, and he wrote ahead: seven letters that survive, to Ephesus, to Rome, to Polycarp and others, composed within living memory of the apostles. In them the structures of the faith are already standing: the Eucharist as the medicine of immortality, the bishop as the centre of unity, and the first recorded use of the phrase the Catholic Church. The letter to Rome exists to make one request, that no one intervene to save him: I am God's wheat, to be ground by the teeth of the beasts into the pure bread of Christ. Rome granted it, and he died there around 107.

Why people turn to St. Ignatius of Antioch

The Church itself when it is under pressure, since his letters are the standing proof of what the first generations actually believed. And, tenderly, people facing death with clear eyes, who want company that walked that road writing letters.

How to ask their intercession

If you are the one dying, or sitting with someone who is, he is good company and asks nothing of you. The wheat sentence is offered here, not pressed.