We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools...now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the Crucified One....The more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the transition from violence to peace and the power of faith amidst persecution.
Justin Martyr speaks to the transformation of humanity from engaging in violence and warfare to embracing peace and faith. He highlights how, despite the adversities faced through persecution and martyrdom, this faith has a profound impact, drawing others to belief and fostering a community rooted in justice, kindness, and hope for the future.
In practice
In a speech on international relations, quoting this to emphasize the importance of diplomacy over conflict.
Not as common bread or as common drink do we receive these.....We have been taught that the food that has been Eucharistized by the word of prayer, that food which by assimilation nourishes our flesh and blood, is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.
Sound doctrine does not enter into the hard and disobedient heart; but, as if beaten back, enters anew into itself.
Let it be understood that those who are not found living as He taught are not Christian- even though they profess with the lips the teaching of Christ.
Now bring what we have into common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different tribe, now since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to persuade those who hate us unjustly, to the end that they may become partakers of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all.
We expect to receive again our own bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth, for we maintain that with God nothing is impossible.
The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.
My job is not to save 'The Wheel of Time', to fix 'The Wheel of Time', or anything like that. My job is not to screw it up.
These sociologists who talk to facilely about the sacred are like a man who keeps a toothless old circus lion around the house in order to experience the thrills of the jungle.
We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness
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