St. Justin Martyr (c. 100-165)

A philosopher from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria who went through the schools - Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean, Platonist - and was brought to Christ by an old man on a beach who told him the prophets had seen what the philosophers were looking for. He kept his philosopher’s cloak, opened a school in Rome, and wrote some of the first reasoned defences of the faith addressed to the emperors. His teaching that seeds of the Word were scattered among the Greeks, so that whatever anyone said well belongs to Christians, gave the Church a way to receive what was true in philosophy. His First Apology contains the oldest description of a Sunday Eucharist outside the New Testament. Denounced by a rival, he was beheaded in Rome with six of his students around 165. Feast: June 1.