Memorial of Saint Justin, Martyr
“My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.” (Psalm 63:2)
I used to live in Southern California. While I lived there, I learned that people talk about water quite a bit or rather the lack of water. California is in a drought, so much of the vegetation there is brown, not green. I lived in a city called Riverside which is next to a river, but the river is dried up. People referred to the spring, summer, and early fall as wildfire season, but because the land was so dry, wildfires could happen any time of the year. However, during one of the winters while I was still living there, the area received a lot of rain. Afterwards, grass grew and flowers bloomed. To illustrate, in Riverside, there is a mountain with a hiking trail called Mount Rubidoux, which usually looks brown and dry, but with all the rain, it was very green, covered in grass. Upon reflecting on today’s Responsorial Psalm, plants needing rain is a good analogy for our faith. Do we water our faith and let it blossom or does it dry up?
Today’s first reading seems to give us advice as to how to live out faith. We are to fill our lives with prayer, love and mercy. The reading also indicates that we cannot live faith alone. We are called to help each other persevere in faith.
This reading omits verse 18 and 19, so out of curiosity, I looked them up in the Bible. Both verses are about those who live only for themselves and cause divisions because of their selfish actions. In this light, we are invited to look into what or whom we center our lives on and what we water our faith with. For whom is our soul thirsting for?
St. Justin Martyr, whose feast day is today, was a person who was searching for God. He searched for truth for several years through various Greek philosophies until an encounter with an old man who questioned him about his beliefs and encouraged him to study the Jewish prophets who foresaw Christ’s coming and the establishment of his Church. Since then, St. Justin was on fire, preaching and defending the faith. So deep was his faith that he was martyred for it. He is an example of someone whose soul was thirsting for God and whose thirst was satiated when he found God. May we find our thirst quenched by God and, as the old man told St. Justin, “pray that the gates of life may be opened to [us].”
—Sr. Emily Sandoval, FMI