On the Third Sunday of Easter our Church invites us to first read and reflect on a passage from the book of Revelation (6;1-17) entitled "The Lamb opens the seals of the book of God". Our treasure, which follows is from the first apology in defense of Christians by Saint Justin, martyr.
Saint Justin, known posthumously as Justin Martyr was a theologian, apologist, and martyr in the second century. He was born around A.D. 90–100 into a Greek family, in the city known today as Nablus near the ancient biblical city of Shechem, in Samaria, Palestine.
Most of his works are lost but two apologies and a dialogue did survive. The first apology, his most well-known text, passionately defends the morality of Christian life and provides various ethical and philosophical arguments to convince the Roman emperor, Antonius, to abandon the persecution of the Church. Further, he also indicates, as Saint Augustine would later, regarding the " true religion" that predated Christianity, that the "seeds of Christianity" actually predated Christ's incarnation. This notion allows him to claim many historical Greek philosophers (including Socrates and Plato) in whose works he well studied, as unknowing Christians.
Saint Justin was martyred, along with some of his students, and his venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church, The Eastern Orthodox Church, The Oriental, Orthodox Churches, Lutheran churches, and Anglicanism.
The First Apology was an early work of Christian apologetics addressed by Justin Martyr to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. In addition to arguing against the persecution of individuals solely for being Christian, Justin also provides the Emperor with a defense of the philosophy of Christianity and a detailed explanation of contemporary Christian practices and rituals. This work, along with the Second Apology, has been cited as one of the earliest examples of Christian apology, and many scholars attribute this work to creating a new genre of apology out of what was a typical Roman administrative procedure.
The Apocalypse, or Revelation to John, the last book of the Bible, is one of the most difficult to understand because it abounds in unfamiliar and extravagant symbolism, which at best appears unusual to the modern reader. Symbolic language, however, is one of the chief characteristics of apocalyptic literature, of which this book is an outstanding example. Such literature enjoyed wide popularity in both Jewish and Christian circles from ca. 200 B.C. to A.D. 200.
This book contains an account of visions in symbolic and allegorical language borrowed extensively from the Old Testament, especially Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel. Whether or not these visions were real experiences of the author or simply literary conventions employed by him is an open question.
