True Faith Is Not Just A Private Thing

17 October 2026  Ephesians 1:15-23

Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr

“And He put all things beneath His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the Church….” (Ephesians 1:22)

“My faith is a private, personal thing, and I don’t think I have to talk about that.”

There is not a single Roman persecutor of the Church who would have had a problem with that.

If Christians had been content to keep their faith a personal thing, there never would have been any persecutions. The Roman government was always happy enough for people to believe whatever they wanted as long as they kept it to themselves.

Thousands of emperors, powers and potentates have come and gone, but we are still here, electing the successor to St. Peter.” And it isn’t because anyone said, “My faith is a private, personal thing, and I don’t think I have to talk about that.” It is because God has put all things under Jesus’ feet

Heck, they could even build temples to foreign deities as long as they didn’t claim their religion to be a public truth that people were obliged to believe. The government had a monopoly on public truth, but if your faith was “just a personal thing,” that was just fine.

In 107 A.D. Emperor Trajan went to Antioch, which was the third largest city in the Empire, and was the primary forward military operating base against the Parthian and Persian empires. Strategically it was a vital location, and emperors from Augustus onward transformed it into a miniature Rome, building aqueducts, baths, theaters and colonnaded streets. When Trajan heard that there was a religious group that had been there for some time that was reluctant to observe traditional pagan religious rites, or even admit the existence of the Roman gods, this struck him as a possible security risk. But Trajan was not an unreasonable man, so he called in the local Christian bishop, Ignatius, for an interview and gave him the chance to say it was “just a personal thing,” as so many other cults had done.

But Ignatius believed that God had put all things under Jesus’ feet “cf. Ephesians 1:22). Even the Romans. Even Trajan. Trajan didn’t have a monopoly on public truth; Jesus did. So, the Christians were a security risk, Trajan concluded, and the Romans didn’t mess around with security risks. Ignatius was arrested and sent to Rome to face the lions of the Colosseum. Trajan was still a reasonable man, though. He wouldn’t risk upsetting anyone in Antioch by killing their bishop there. He sent Ignatius far away to do that, where presumably the people wouldn’t care so much.

But they did care. Antioch was remembered as the first place believers were called Christians (cf. Acts 11:26), and, thanks to Ignatius, the first place Christians were called Catholic. Rome was replaced by Constantinople as the city of emperors. But it is still the “eternal city” because of the Church.

The story is told that when Pope Francis was elected Pope and was presented on the famous logia of St. Peter’s basilica, one cardinal on the logia was looking out in a somewhat different direction, taking in the panorama of the whole city. When another cardinal asked what he was looking at, he said, “I was just thinking that St. Peter saw that obelisk in the middle of the square. Thousands of emperors, powers and potentates have come and gone, but we are still here, electing the successor to St. Peter.”

And it isn’t because anyone said, “My faith is a private, personal thing, and I don’t think I have to talk about that.” It is because God has put all things under Jesus’ feet, and requires that we talk about that.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, pray for us.