St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-108)

Bishop of Antioch after the Apostles, arrested under Trajan and taken under guard across Asia Minor to be thrown to the beasts in Rome. On the way he wrote seven letters to the churches, and they are the clearest window there is onto the Church in the generation after the Apostles: a bishop, presbyters and deacons in every city; a Eucharist that is the flesh of Christ, the medicine of immortality; and a Church he was the first to call catholic, in a sentence usually misquoted: wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic Church. He begged the Romans not to save him. I am the wheat of God, he wrote, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Feast: December 20.