Today we commemorate St. Justin, Martyr. From the Treasury and our Synod's website:June 1
Justin, Martyr Born at the beginning of the second century, Justin was raised in a pagan family. He was student of philosophy who converted to the Christian faith and became a teacher in Ephesus and Rome. After refusing to make pagan sacrifices, he was arrested, tried and executed, along with six other believers. The official Roman court proceedings of his trial before Rusticius, a Roman prelate, document his confession of faith. The account of his martyrdom became a source of great encouragement to the early Christian community. Much of what we know of early liturgical practice comes from Justin.
My favorite quote from Justin is this:
For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but just as our Savior Jesus Christ, being incarnate through the work of God, took flesh and blood for our salvation, so too we have been taught that the food over which thanks have been given by a prayer of the Word that is from Him, from which our flesh and blood are fed by transformation, is both the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. (First Apology 66:2)
Almighty and everlasting God, You found Your martyr Justin wandering from teacher to teacher, searching for the true God. Grant that all who seek for a deeper knowledge of the sublime wisdom of Your eternal Word may be found by You, who, sent Your Son to seek and to save the lost; through Jesus Christ, our Lord...
For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but just as our Savior Jesus Christ, being incarnate through the work of God, took flesh and blood for our salvation, so too we have been taught that the food over which thanks have been given by a prayer of the Word that is from Him, from which our flesh and blood are fed by transformation, is both the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. (First Apology 66:2)
Almighty and everlasting God, You found Your martyr Justin wandering from teacher to teacher, searching for the true God. Grant that all who seek for a deeper knowledge of the sublime wisdom of Your eternal Word may be found by You, who, sent Your Son to seek and to save the lost; through Jesus Christ, our Lord...
1 comment:
Back in my RC days, I thought he was a nut. The stuff we heard back then about his wanting martyrdom so bad anf finally getting it for which he is given the honorific "martyr" appears to be airbrushed out of current accounts. Not to mention, you don't seek martyrdom, you seek to witness to Christ, that is what a martyr is, and if the world imposes death because of that, as it often did in his day thus the shift in meaning of the term, true martyrdom is being a witness to Christ and not worrying about the consequences to oneself one way or the other. Or so we were taught, on which basis I thought he was a nut.
I forgot that the novus ordo calendar jacked his date around too. Pope Leo XIII put him in the general Roman calendar in 1882 for 14 April, the day after old martyrologies give as the date of his "martyrdom". But that often falls in Holy Week. Great sanctoral Judas, what was old Leo thinking? So the novus ordo moved him, but at least this time moved him to something traditional rather than revisionist -- his feast in the Eastern Church has been 1 June for about a thousand years, though why I don't know, just as I don't know why he belongs in any sanctoral calendat at all.
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