CONTEMPLATING TRINITY

From(ZENIT.org).- For the faithful, communion within the Church should be closely linked to the work of evangelization, says Benedict XVI. The Pope said this today at the general audience when delivering a catechesis on St. Ignatius of Antioch. Some 40,000 people gathered in St. Peter's Square, about a quarter of whom came from Apulia, Italy, accompanying their bishops for their five-yearly visit to Rome. The Holy Father continued his cycle of catecheses on the apostolic fathers. St. Ignatius was bishop of Antioch, a town located in what is today Turkey. He was bishop there from A.D. 70 to 107, the year of his martyrdom in Rome. On his journey to his martyrdom, he wrote seven letters from the cities of Smyrna and Troas. The Pontiff described these letters as examples of "the freshness of the faith of the generations that had known the apostles" and "the ardent love of a saint." He continued: "No other Church Father expressed as intensely as Ignatius the wish for union with Christ and life in him. "For Ignatius, union is 'above all a prerogative of God who being three,' is one in absolute union. He often repeats that God is union and only in God can this be found in the pure and original state." Divine archetype Ignatius thus elaborates a particular vision of the Church, according to which the "union to be reached in this world by Christians is but an imitation, the closest possible to the divine archetype," Benedict XVI explained. He continued: "In general, in Ignatius' letters, we can see a sort of constant and fruitful dialectic between the two aspects characteristic of Christian life: on one hand the hierarchical structure of the ecclesial community, and on the other hand, the fundamental union that links all the faithful in Christ.