St Ignatius of Antioch belonged to the generation of Christians that emerged towards the end of the first century immediately after the apostles. He was a friend of St Polycarp who, according to tradition, was a disciple of the evangelist, St John. We are very close to the historical person of Jesus and the very first apostles. We should read Ignatius with this context in mind.
As bishop of Antioch, he wrote a number of important letters to Christians in other parts of the very early Christian world. Some of these were written on his way to martyrdom at the turn of the first century. He gave clear witness to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist: he referred to the Eucharist as ‘the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ’, and writes of his desire for ‘the bread of God … which is the flesh of Jesus Christ’ and for ‘the drink of God, namely His blood’. He referred to the Eucharist as the’medicine of immortality’ (Ignatius to the Ephesians 20:2).
