Why Martyrdom Matters, by Regis Martin

[Editor’s Note: This is the twelth in a multi-part series on St. Ignatius of Antioch]

While current scholarship is unclear on the matter of St. Ignatius of Antioch ever having been to Rome before going there to die, there is no doubt whatsoever regarding his great love and esteem for the city. Not the pagan side of the place, of course, that being the reason for his martyrdom, but the Church of Rome herself, for whom he felt profound, even mystic, devotion. Knowing that here was the place where, by God’s design, foundations were laid, that the Petrine Office began—that the blood of Peter and Paul and countless others annealed in Christ had been shed—stoked his imagination like no other place on the planet. …