Saint Justin

Justin was born in Flavia Neapolis, in Samaria, around the year 93. His family had probably settled there not long before, following the Roman armies that had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. He was raised a pagan and received an excellent education. He spent his youth looking for a philosophy that would hold up. He tells the story himself, in the Dialogue with Trypho: he tried the Stoics, the Peripatetics, the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and each time he was left halfway. Then, walking by the sea, he met an old man who asked him questions he couldn’t answer, and spoke to him about the prophets. That is where his conversion came from. He didn’t stop being a philosopher: he kept wearing the cloak of the teachers and opened a school in Rome. His idea is still surprising today — that everything true the Greek philosophers had ever thought already belonged to Christianity, because truth is one, wherever it comes from. We owe something very precious to his pen: in the First Apology, written to explain Christianity to the emperor, he describes in every detail what the Mass was like in the second century. It is the oldest description we have, and it is surprisingly similar to the Mass of today. He was denounced and tried in Rome, and beheaded with six companions around 167. The records of that trial survive. He is the patron saint of philosophers. If your name is Justin, today is your name day.