St. Justin Martyr

Their story

Justin was born around the year 100 in Samaria, in the Holy Land, to a pagan family. As a young man he hungered for the truth and went from one school of philosophy to another, searching for answers about God and the meaning of life. None of them satisfied him. Then one day, walking by the sea, he met an old man who told him about the Hebrew prophets and about Jesus Christ, in whom their words were fulfilled. Justin wrote that a fire was kindled in his soul, and he became a Christian. Justin kept wearing the cloak of a philosopher and became the first great Christian philosopher. He moved to Rome and opened a school, and he wrote books explaining and defending the faith to the emperor and to educated pagans and Jews. In one of them he gave the oldest detailed description we have of the Mass: Christians gathering on Sunday, listening to the writings of the apostles and prophets, praying together, and receiving the bread and wine that had become the Body and Blood of Christ. It is remarkably like the Mass we celebrate today. Justin's teaching made him enemies. Around the year 165 he and six companions were arrested in Rome and ordered to sacrifice to the gods. They refused and were beheaded. Justin found in Christ the truth he had been seeking all his life, and he gave his life rather than deny it.