SPEAKER_00: Today the church gives us one of the great giants of early Christianity, Saint Justin Martyr.
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, most Catholics have no idea how important this man really is.
SPEAKER_00: Justin lived in the second century, only a few generations after the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity was still illegal.
SPEAKER_00: Christians were misunderstood, they were mocked, persecuted, and accused of all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Some pagans believed Christians were atheists because they refused to worship Roman gods.
SPEAKER_00: Others accuse them of cannibalism because they heard Christians talk about eating the body and blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it is into that confusion that Justin steps into it.
SPEAKER_00: Justin was not born Christian, he was a philosopher.
SPEAKER_00: He spent years searching for truth.
SPEAKER_00: He studied Stoicism, Aristotle, Plato, different schools of philosophy, trying to answer the deepest questions of life.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually he encountered Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: And what struck him was this Christianity was not irrational.
SPEAKER_00: It was not mythology.
SPEAKER_00: It was the fulfillment of everything the human heart was searching for.
SPEAKER_00: Justin famously called Christianity the true philosophy.
SPEAKER_00: And what makes him so important for us is that he was one of the first Christians to publicly explain and defend the faith intellectually.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote directly to the Roman Emperor, defending Christians and explaining what happens at Mass.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, one of the reasons we know so much about the early Mass is because Saint Justin Martyr, around the year 155, describes Christians gathered on Sunday, learning and listening to the readings, hearing a homily, offering prayers, exchanging peace, bringing bread and wine, and receiving the Eucharist, which he explicitly says is truly the body and blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people speak as if the church invented these things centuries later.
SPEAKER_00: No, Justin is describing the Mass less than 120 years after the resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually his defense of Christianity cost him his life.
SPEAKER_00: He was ordered to renounce Christ and to sacrifice pagan gods.
SPEAKER_00: Of course he refused.
SPEAKER_00: And before his execution, he said something extraordinary.
SPEAKER_00: No one who is rightly minded turns from true belief to false.
SPEAKER_00: That's a martyr.
SPEAKER_00: Not someone who dies for an opinion.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who dies because they encountered truth, capital T himself.
SPEAKER_00: And that connects deeply to the readings today.
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SPEAKER_00: Peter says, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not merely emotional belief.
SPEAKER_00: It is transformational.
SPEAKER_00: Faith that shapes the intellect, disciplines the passions, purifies the heart, and teaches a person how to live.
SPEAKER_00: Justin understood this.
SPEAKER_00: He knew Christianity could withstand scrutiny because truth does not fear examination.
SPEAKER_00: And then the gospel gives us the parable of the vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: The servants are rejected.
SPEAKER_00: The prophets are beaten, and finally the beloved son is killed outside the vineyard.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is speaking about himself.
SPEAKER_00: Humanity keeps rejecting the very one sent to save it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the uncomfortable truth for us.
SPEAKER_00: Every age repeats this parable.
SPEAKER_00: Every generation must decide what it will do with the Son.
SPEAKER_00: Will we receive him?
SPEAKER_00: Or will we try to remove him because his authority interferes with our autonomy?
SPEAKER_00: That was a struggle in ancient Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the struggle today.
SPEAKER_00: Our culture often wants spirituality without surrender, morality without truth, religion without sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: But Christianity does not allow us to recreate God in our own image.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the martyrs matter so much.
SPEAKER_00: The martyrs remind us that Christianity is either true or it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody dies for a motivational speaker.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody faces execution for a metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody gives up absolutely everything for something they know is false.
SPEAKER_00: The blood of the martyrs is one of the greatest proofs that these men and women truly believe they had encountered the risen Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe today St.
SPEAKER_00: Justin Martyr challenges us with a very direct question.
SPEAKER_00: Do I know my faith deeply enough to defend it?
SPEAKER_00: Could I explain what I believe?
SPEAKER_00: Have I settled for shallow Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: Because one of the greatest cries today is not simply that people reject Christianity, it is that many Christians have never actually learned it.
SPEAKER_00: Justin teaches us that loving God involves the mind as well as the heart.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, his life points us to this final truth.
SPEAKER_00: The world may reject the cornerstone, but the cornerstone remains.
SPEAKER_00: Empires rise and fall, cultures change, ideologies come and go.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus Christ, well, he remains the cornerstone upon which everything else stands or falls.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.