Catholic Bishop and God’s Promise Realized through Faith

Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who lived and was a martyr in the early 2nd century CE is remember for impassioned letters he wrote on the way to Rome to be fed to the lions in the amphitheatre. His final appeals are to faith in Jesus, upon which rests all other activity, and loyalty to the Bishop. In the apostolic tradition of the Church, the Bishop traces his call to be Shepherd to the Apostles. Faith to the followers of Christ, as proclaimed by Saint Ignatius, in today’s Roman Catholic Lectionary, is the path to the realization of the Promise of God. That Promise is the free gift, to people today of all races, creeds and genders, of the realization of the indwelling of the Divine. Abraham knew this gift and became the “Father of many nations’. (The people of the Book, Jew Christian and Muslim know Abraham as “father”) Sometimes it is an act of faith to seek and accept the gracious of God comes to us in “earthen vessels” about which Paul has commented “all have sinned” and “all have fallen short”. It is to the sinners that Jesus comes as Shepherd.