Among Unconquered Ruins
Antioch of Pisidia (in Acts 13:14-41)
As we walked the half-buried streets of Pisidian Antioch, the sun beat down from overhead on the bleached stones. Perched on a hill, Antioch looks down on modern Yalvaç with the ancient temple of Caesar Augustus, son of a god and pontifex maximus, casting its once-imposing gaze over cities both ancient and modern. Through these streets I walked, glancing at the graven relics of the city, a bull’s head here, a nymph there, each preserved incomplete on the scattered rocks. In the rubble, numerous inscriptions remain which attribute great deeds to some forgotten man or dedicate structures to saving gods. One of these fragments carved into the stone caught my sight: Invictiis ____. For the unconquered _____. The name lost to time, only his status as one who could not be defeated remains, slowly being chipped away by the cutting wind under the bleaching sun.
In answer to the pagan society which surrounded him in North Africa much as pagan society surrounded St. Paul in Antioch, St. Augustine inscribed his own dedication in his Confessions, writing, “I wish to make in my heart a confession before You, O God, but before many witnesses, a confession with my pen.” No words stricken on stone, scrawled on vellum, or even typed in pixels will survive the scattering winds of time. All those unconquerables of Antioch, Augustus, Diogenes evaporate under the sun. Only what is imprinted on the heart by the Spirit lasts. As St. Paul said in writing to the people of this region, “God has sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father'” (Gal 4:6). The unconquerables of what is below fade into history, while the Christian heart, our hearts, dwelling in what is above, remain unconquered in Christ.
-Peter Binder, Archdiocese of Dubuque
