St. Justin Martyr

St. Justin Martyr was born around the year 100 at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria, the ancient Shechem and modern Nablus, to a pagan family of Greek or Roman descent. As a young man he undertook a restless search for truth through the philosophical schools of his day—Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean, and finally Platonist—convinced that philosophy's true task was to lead the soul to God. His search ended, as he himself recounts, in a conversation with a mysterious old man by the seashore, who pointed him beyond the philosophers to the Hebrew prophets and to Christ. Justin was also deeply moved by the fearless witness of Christians facing death. He was baptized around the age of thirty, and ever after wore the philosopher's cloak as a Christian, teaching that in Christ the fullness of the truth glimpsed by the philosophers had appeared in person. Justin became the most important Christian apologist of the second century. Settling in Rome, where he opened a school, he addressed his First Apology to the emperor Antoninus Pius and a second to the Roman Senate, defending Christians against slander and explaining their worship; his Dialogue with Trypho records an extended, respectful debate with a learned Jew. His description of the Sunday Eucharist—the reading of the Scriptures, the prayers, the offering of bread and wine, and communion—is among the most precious witnesses we possess to the liturgy of the early Church, and is quoted in the Catechism to this day. Denounced as a Christian, according to the authentic acts of his martyrdom, Justin was tried before the prefect Rusticus together with six companions, refused to sacrifice to the gods, and was scourged and beheaded around the year 165, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Venerated as a saint from the earliest centuries, long before formal canonization processes existed, he is honored on June 1 as the patron of philosophers and apologists, a model for all who seek and defend the truth.