St. Justin Martyr

Who they were

Justin was born to pagan settlers at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria and went looking for truth the honest way. He tried the Stoics, who had no interest in God, then a Peripatetic, who was too interested in fees, then a Pythagorean, who wanted music and geometry first, and settled among the Platonists, until an old man on a seashore walked his confident metaphysics into the ground and pointed him to the Hebrew prophets and the Christ they announced.

His conclusion made him the first of a type. Christianity, he wrote, is the true philosophy, and he kept wearing the philosopher's cloak while teaching it, debating publicly in Rome. His two Apologies, addressed to the emperor himself, argue on reason's own turf, and preserve almost in passing the earliest detailed description of what Christians do on Sunday: the readings, the homily, the prayers, the bread and cup, and the collection for orphans and widows. It is a Mass any Catholic would recognize, written around 155. Denounced, he was tried before the prefect Rusticus, whose court transcript survives, answered plainly, refused the gods, and was beheaded with six companions.

Why people turn to St. Justin Martyr

People arguing their way toward faith, or with it: the inquirer, the philosophy student, the one in the late night debate. He pairs with St. John Henry Newman for the long argument and St. Thomas the Apostle for the honest demand.

How to ask their intercession

With the real objection on the table, which was his whole method. Ask his prayers for the argument to be honest in both directions, and for the seashore stranger: the one conversation that reroutes everything.