Feast Day: June 1
The Life of Saint Justin: [He] sought the answers to the world’s most pressing problems in the teachings of the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, and especially in the experiences found in the Lives of the Saints… It was at this time that he received the calling and vision from God to translate into modern Serbian the entire Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, a feat which to this day is truly astounding… [and], the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom…
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Prayers
Troparion: As Orthodox sweetness and Divine nectar, Venerable Father thou dost flow into the hearts of believers as a wealth: by thy life and teachings thou didst reveal thyself to be a living book of the Spirit, most wise Justin; therefore Pray to Christ the Word that the Word may dwell in those who honour thee.
A Prayer: O Holy Father Justin, thy sweetness of life refreshes our souls. Thy love for truth and desire to live with all the Saints is a reminder to us of our own calling from God to pursue virtue, that we, most unenlightened and miserable sinners, may open our hearts to the knowledge of Truth Incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom belongs Glory, Honour and Worship, together with His Un-originate Father, and Life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
“There is no joy in this world without God.”
“Love for Christ overflows into love for one’s neighbour, love for truth, love for Holiness, for the world, for purity, for everything Divine, for everything deathless and Eternal. All these forms of love are natural manifestations of love for Christ. Christ is the God-man, and love for Him always means love for God and for man. When we love Christ God, we also love all that is Divine, immortal and Christ-like in people. We can’t truly love people if we do not love them for the sake of these causes. Any other love is pseudo-love, which is easily changed into lovelessness and hatredness toward people. True love for man comes from love for God, and love for God grows in accordance with the keeping of His commandments.”
“The Gospel is endlessly written. All of creation, as a logical creation, ceaselessly writes the Gospel of the Logos – of the Lord Christ. Every violet writes it; every blade of grass, every insect, every bird; and especially humanity – as a God-like, Christ-like being.”
“The sign of purity is: to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep; to be in pain with the sick and in anguish with the sinners; to rejoice with the repentant and to participate in the agony of those who suffer; to criticize no man and, in the purity of one’s own mind, to see all men as good and Holy.”
“It is only through its Divine-human power that Christianity is the “salt” of the Earth, a salt which preserves humanity from decomposing into sin and evil. If, however, Christianity becomes decomposed into various humanistic elements, then it becomes lifeless, it becomes a “saltless” salt, which, according to the ever-true word of the Saviour, “is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men” (Matth. 5:13).””
“Anything created that breaks off from Him [the God-man] inevitably plunges into chaos and grief. And when a people, as a group, deny the God-man, their history turns into a journey through hell and its horrors.”
“Without doubt, matter is represented in the human body in a manner which is most puzzling, most mysterious, and most complex. The brain: What wondrous mysteries pass between its physical and Spiritual parts! How vast is the experience of the human race. In no manner can one ever fully comprehend or grasp these mysteries. Indeed, little of this is accessible to the human senses or intellectual investigation. So it is also with the heart of man, formed as it is entirely and solely from cosmic mysteries. So formed, too, are every cell, every molecule, every atom. Everyone and all are set on their mystical path toward God, toward the God-Man. Inasmuch as it was created by God, the Logos, matter possesses this same Theocentricity. Moreover, by His advent into our Earthly world, by His all-embracing condescension as God and Man for the redemption of the world, the Lord Christ clearly demonstrated that not only the Soul, but matter also was created by God and for God, and that He is God and Man; and for it, matter, He is all and everything in the same manner as for the Soul. Being created by God, the Logos, matter is, in its innermost core, God-longing and Christ-longing.”
“This is what it is to be of Christ: to feel yourself perpetually crucified to the world, persecuted by it, violated and spat-upon. The world will not tolerate Christ-bearing men just as it would not tolerate Christ.”
“Education without God has led Europe and the whole world into a darkness, such as humanity has never seen. In this darkness, no one knows anyone and no one recognizes his brother… If man is without Christ, without God, namely, without this unique inextinguishable light, how will he disperse the gloom of the universe, which from all sides – attacks him? And how will he expel the darkness within him? With all his lights [i.e., man’s worldly achievements through secular knowledge], but without God, man is nothing other than a firefly in the infinite darkness of the universe.”
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“Prayer is prosphora mixed from tears and the heart.”
“Everything in the Church comes about through the Holy Spirit, from the least to the greatest. In fact, every Holy Mystery and Holy Virtue is a little Pentecost; in them, the Holy Spirit descends upon us, into us. The Lord dwells in us by the Holy Spirit, and we in Him. This is testified to us by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. We live by the Holy Spirit in Christ, and He in us. We know this “by the Spirit which He hath given us” (I Jn. 3:24).”
“Spiritual Prayer turns into ecstasy, in which are revealed the Mysteries of the Holy Trinity, and the intellect enters that sphere of Holy unknowing that is greater than knowledge.”
“Orthodox are Orthodox because they constantly have this sense of Divine-human catholicity (truth), warming it and guarding it with Prayer and serenity. They never proclaim themselves; they never boast of man; they never remain before bare humanness; they never idolatrize humanism. The Holy Christ-bearing Apostles gave once and for all time the formula of Divine-human ecclesiology: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). First the Holy Spirit, and then us; in such a way we permit the Holy Spirit to work through us.”
“The purpose of man is to fill himself with the God-man, in His body – the Orthodox Church; to be transfigured in Him through Grace-filled struggles; to become omnipotent. Even while in the body he walks Prayerfully through the gloomy Earthly anthill; in his Soul he lives above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, for his life is constantly stretched out between Earth and Heaven by Prayers, like a rainbow that connects the summit of Heaven with the abyss of Earth.”
“By reading the Bible you are adding yeast to the dough of your Soul and body, which gradually expands and fills the Soul until it has thoroughly permeated it and makes it rise with the truth and righteousness of the Gospel.”
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“Pay attention how you live! You know who you are: the Divine greatness of God in the world. You know your rank. Live according to it. Oh man, my brother! Do never forget that you are a little god in becoming. In the creation of your soul, you wear the living icon of God. Pay attention how you live, pay attention what you do with the Image of God from your inner self. Pay attention, oh man. Oh man! Oh man! For our life has, its, beginning on Earth but it takes us before the enlightening Face of God, for it is there where to give a response to what we have done with the Image of God in this life”.
“When a man is not with God, he is a plaything of the devil. And the devil plays with him: one moment he fills his Soul with impure thoughts, another moment he kindles his tongue with cursing, another moment he leads him into slandering, into thievery, into debauchery, and into every other evil deed And it continues this way until a man remembers God, takes refuge in the temple of God, and falls down before God. Then he is entirely in Heaven and neither the human evils of the world, nor demons can touch him.”
“The Soul is restored to health by silence. It is therefore necessary to train oneself to silence – and this is a labor that brings sweetness to the heart. It is through silence that a man reaches peace from unwanted thoughts.”
“Why is there so much evil in the world today? Because people have thrown away their most reliable weapon, the all-victorious weapon with which every evil, every sin, and every demon are assuredly vanquished on all battlefields. And this weapon is Prayer and fasting.”
“Man is placed on the road between Paradise and hell, between God and satan. Every thought and reflection of man, and every feeling of his, brings the Soul one step closer to Paradise or one step closer to hell.”
“You are a Christian, your calling is to achieve Eternal Life, to fight day and night for Eternal Life; and for the sake of it, you must bear every torment, every hardship, every struggle with joy”
“Never forget that to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with death.”
“Give up everything for Christ; do not give up Christ for anything.”
“What is the human mind without Christ? It’s a suffering, tortured lamentation. What is the human Soul without Christ? It’s a talking scarecrow. What is our conscience, our free will? Hopeless blindness. What is the body without Christ? A disgusting, loathsome worm. What is our will. A helpless criminal In general, what are we without Christ? A terrible, external spectacle.”
“From the first virtue, faith, to the last, which is love for all, there extends one unbroken path: Asceticism. On this long path a man forms, transforms, and transfigures himself through the Grace of his Ascetic endeavors. In this way he heals his being from the sicknesses of sin and ignorance, restoring the integrity of his person, unifying and making whole his spirit.”
“A man is ninety-nine percent from the sky and only one percent of the Earth. Therefore, we must climb up to the sky every minute, crawl to the sky, run to the sky, fly to the sky.”
“[Christ] brought down all the Divine perfections from Heaven to Earth. And He did not just bring them down, but also taught them to us and gave us Grace-filled power to have them transform our lives, our thoughts, our feelings, our deeds. Hence, our calling is to incarnate them in ourselves and in the world around us.”
“To become immortal in Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, to become God, to become the God-man – this is the purpose, the true purpose of the whole human race. It is also the joy, the only joy in this world of boundless sorrow and toxic bitterness.”
“Conquering sin in himself through Christ, man overcomes death. If you have lived the day without vanquishing a single sin of yours, know that you have become deadened. Vanquish one, two, or three of your sins, and behold: you have become younger than the youth which does not age, young in immortality and eternity. Never forget that to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with death.”
“If a man fights with sins and passions, this demonstrates that he indeed believes in the Risen Lord; if he fights with them, he fights for Life Eternal. If he does not fight, his faith is in vain. If a man’s faith is not a fight for immortality and Eternity, then tell me, what is it? If faith in Christ does not bring us to resurrection and Life Eternal, then of what use is it to us? If Christ is not Risen, that means that neither sin nor death has been vanquished. Then why believe in Christ? For the one who, by faith in the Risen Lord, fights with each of his sins, there will be gradually affirmed in him that Christ: is indeed Risen; has indeed vanquished the sting of sin; has indeed vanquished death, on all the fronts of combat.”
“The Soul is made drunk by the passions but can recover its health if it will use the virtues as the path to sobriety. The virtues, however, are woven through with sorrow and afflictions. Saint Isaac says that every virtue is a cross, and even that sorrows and afflictions are the source of the virtues. He therefore expressly advocates a love of oppression and sorrow, so that by them a man may be freed from the things of this world and have a mind that is detached from the world’s confusion. For man must first free himself from the material world in order to be born of God. Such is the economy of Grace; such, too, is the economy of knowledge.”
“Christianity is a vocation – a battle with death until the last breath, a battle until a final victory has been reached. Every sin is a retreat, every passion means running away, and every vice is a defeat.”
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“If you wish, the Lives of the Saints are a sort of Orthodox Encyclopedia. In them can be found everything which is necessary for the Soul which hungers and thirsts for Eternal righteousness and Eternal truth in this life, and which hungers and thirsts for Divine immortality and Eternal Life. If faith is what you need, there you will find it in abundance: and you will feed your Soul with food which will never make it hungry. If you need love, truth, righteousness, hope, meekness, humility, repentance, Prayer, or whatever virtue or podvig, in them, the Lives of the Saints, you will find a countless number of Holy teachers for every podvig and will obtain Grace-filled help for every virtue.”
“If you are suffering for your faith in Christ, the Lives of the Saints will console you and encourage you and make you bold and give you wings, and your torments will be changed into joy.”
“Let us return to the Christ-bearing Ascetics and to the Holy Fathers.”
“There is no passion, no sin for which the Lives of the Saints do not show how the passion or sin in question in conquered, mortified, and uprooted”.
“The most obvious proof of this is the fact that God the Word has become Incarnate, has become man (John 1:14). By His Incarnation, matter has been magnified with Divine Glory and has entered into the Grace – and virtue – bestowing, ascetic aim of deification, or union with Christ. God has become flesh, has become human, so that the entire man, the entire body, might be filled with God and with His miracle-working forces and powers. In the God-Man, the Lord Christ, and His Body, all matter has been set on a path toward Christ – the path of Deification, transfiguration, Sanctification, resurrection, and ascent to an Eternal Glory surpassing that of the Cherubim. And all of this takes place and will continue to take place through the Divine and human Body of the Church, which is truly the God-Man Christ in the total fullness of His Divine and Human Person, the fullness “that fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23). Through its Divine and human existence in the Church, the human body, as matter, as substance, is Sanctified by the Holy Spirit and in this way participates in the life of the Trinity. Matter thus attains its transcendent, Divine meaning and goal, its Eternal blessedness and its immortal joy in the God-Man.”
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“I will sacrifice myself in order to save the Canons of the Church, but in the case of saving one person, I will sacrifice all the Canons.”
“All the suns and stars are not worth as much as one Soul.”
“In the material world there is nothing in value to the value of the human Soul, nor is there anything by which the Soul can be appraised or ransomed. The Soul is worth more than the entire universe.”
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“Man sentenced God to death; by His Resurrection, He sentenced man to immortality. In return for a beating, He gives an embrace; for abuse, a blessing; for death, immortality. Man never showed so much hate for God as when he Crucified Him; and God never showed more love for man than when He arose. Man even wanted to reduce God to a mortal, but God by His Resurrection made man immortal. The Crucified God is Risen and has killed death. Death is no more. Immortality has surrounded man and all the world.”
“There is no end to the love of the Lord Christ for man.”
“In truth there is only one freedom – the Holy freedom of Christ, whereby He freed us from sin, from evil, from the devil. It binds us to God. All other freedoms are illusory, false, that is to say, they are all, in fact, slavery.”
“A man in this world must solve a problem: to be with Christ, or to be against Him. And every man decides this, whether he wants to or not. He will either be a lover of Christ or a fighter of Christ. There is no third option.”
“Christians, always rejoice, for evil, death, sin, the devil and hell have been conquered by Christ. But when all of this is conquered, is there anyone in the world who can bring our joy to naught? You are the lord of this eternal rejoicing as long as you do not give in to sin. Joy burns in our hearts from His Truth, love, Resurrection, and from the Church and His Saints. Joy burns in our hearts all because of sufferings for Him, mockings for Him, and death for Him, insofar as these sufferings write our names in Heaven. There is no true joy on Earth without the victory over death, but the victory over death does not exist without the Resurrection, and the Resurrection does not exist without Christ. The Risen God-Man Christ, the founder of the Church, constantly pours out this joy into the hearts of His followers through the Holy Mysteries and good deeds. Our faith is fulfilled in this Eternal joy, insofar as the joy of faith in Christ is the only true joy for human nature.”
“In Christianity truth is not a philosophical concept nor is it a theory, a teaching, or a system, but rather, it is the living theanthropic hypostasis – the historical Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Before Christ men could only conjecture about the Truth since they did not possess it. With Christ as the Incarnate Divine Logos the Eternally complete Divine Truth enters into the world. For this reason the Gospel says: “Truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).””
“Humility is upheld and protected by the Holy Spirit, and not only draws man to God, but also God to man. Furthermore, humility was the cause of the Son of God taking flesh, that closest union of God with man: Humility made God a man on Earth. Humility is the adornment of Divinity, for the Word made flesh spoke with us through the human body with which had clothed himself.”
“If Christ is not Risen from the dead, then why believe in Him? To be honest, I would never have believed in Him had He not Risen and not, therefore, vanquished death. Our greatest enemy was killed, and we were given immortality. Without this, our world is a noisy display of revolting stupidity and despair. For neither in Heaven nor under Heaven is their greater stupidity than this world without Resurrection. And there is not a greater despair than this life without immortality. There is no being in this world more miserable than a man who does not believe in the resurrection of the dead. It would have better for such a man never to have been born.”
“Why is the God-man the fundamental truth of Orthodoxy? Because He answered all the questions that torture and torment the human spirit: the question of life and death, the question of good and evil, the question of Earth and Heaven, the question of truth and falsehood, the question of love and hate, the question of justice and injustice. In brief: the question of man and God.”
“Just try and imagine either a more perfect God than Christ or a more perfect man. But you will not be able to do so, because no individual or collective human thought can imagine either a more perfect God than Christ or a more perfect man. What is exceptional and unique in all this is that all Divine perfections in Christ are humanly real and concrete. Divine truth and love, righteousness, goodness, and beauty are given in Him as the clearest human and Earthly realities. There is no perfect good or perfect truth or beauty that cannot be found incarnate in His Person and realized in His life.”
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