Daily Gospel Reflection
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June 1, 2025
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.
And behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you;
but stay in the city
until you are clothed with power from on high.”
Then he led them out as far as Bethany,
raised his hands, and blessed them.
As he blessed them he parted from them
and was taken up to heaven.
They did him homage
and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
and they were continually in the temple praising God.
As we continue to reflect on the teachings of our late pope, Francis, today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke invites us to contemplate one of the key themes that animated his pontificate—the need to see reality from the perspective of those on the peripheries of life, recognizing that they have “another way of looking at things; they see aspects of reality that are invisible to the centers of power where weighty decisions are made.” (Fratelli Tutti, no. 215)
Notice the importance of place in today’s gospel. In this reading, Jesus draws his disciples out from Jerusalem, the center of political and religious power in ancient Israel, and to the peripheries of the small, desolate village of Bethany, a city situated just outside of the Holy City but reserved explicitly for the downtrodden. Significantly, before calling them home, it is from, as one scholar has observed, the village where the poor alone found a home, that Jesus ascends to heaven and the church springs forth, called into God’s mission in joyful anticipation of Christ’s second coming.
In a world where brokenness and division are more apparent than ever, like the disciples then, today we too are called to move from the places of power in which we find ourselves and to the peripheries of our world. While such places may be physical spaces, they may also be, as then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said, “existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.”
In each of these instances, our evangelical call to be church leads us out from our comfort zones, asks us to confront discomfort head-on, and then implores us to return home to change the centers of power that bind us. Might we, like the disciples, joyfully be led to the peripheries, for it was from the peripheries that Christ sent his disciples back to the center. And, it is from the peripheries that Christ sends us home to preach the gospel in our day and age.
Prayer
God of wisdom and truth, you reveal to people of faith your oneness amid the diversity and uniqueness in the world around us. Make yourself known to us and to all people, as the one God, living and true. Affirm your truth in our lives that we may be witnesses of your unchanging presence. May your declared truth in the life and teachings of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, be our salvation and guide. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Justin the Martyr, one of the most famous of the early Church martyrs, is remembered both for his steadfast faith in the face of death and because he was one of the first thinkers to reconcile the faith with reason.
Justin lived and died in the first part of the second century (about AD 90 - AD 165) and is known as the first Christian apologist. (In Greek, the word “apology” means “to defend with speech.”)
His parents were nonbelievers, and they provided the best education of the time to Justin—he thrived in rhetoric, poetry, and history, and later studied philosophy. He spent several years seeking knowledge of God and found several teachers who eventually disappointed him. One day, he struck up a conversation with an older man who introduced him to Christianity. Justin inquired further and began to learn the faith.
Even before this encounter, however, the example of Christian martyrs had aroused his curiosity. “Even at the time when I was content with the doctrines of Plato,” he wrote, “when I heard Christians accused and saw them fearlessly meet death and all that is considered terrible, I felt that such people could not possibly have been leading the life of vicious pleasure with which they were credited.” When he was about 30 years old, he fully embraced the faith and became a Christian.
This was very early in the Church’s history, and few non-Christians knew or understood anything about the faith. Early martyrs were mostly uneducated and died without being able to fully defend their beliefs. Justin, who spent his life in dialogue with seekers of truth, thought that many others would accept Christianity if they had a reasonable explanation of it. He began to write and speak about the Christian faith to other philosophers.
Christian rituals were the source of much gossip because they were thought to be secretive. Justin explained these rites and other aspects of the faith to the people of the Roman Empire, who condemned Christians because they feared they would undermine the nation with their licentiousness and disloyalty. Justin countered that Christians, in fact, were peaceable people concerned for the common good and the rule of law—in fact, he argued, Christians made better Roman citizens.
He made several trips to Rome, where he engaged pagan thinkers in public debate—besting them and revealing their ignorance. In the end, his work was considered a threat to the empire’s cultural religion, and he was arrested and ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods. He refused and was beheaded with six other Christians (five men and one woman).
The account of his trial and martyrdom remains a valuable artifact in Christian tradition and is considered very reliable. What follows is part of the proceedings recorded when Justin and his companions were brought before the Roman prefect, Rusticus.
Rusticus: Listen, you who are so eloquent and who believes that he has the truth—if I have you beaten and beheaded, do you believe that you will then go up to heaven?
Justin: If I suffer as you say, I hope to receive the reward of those who keep Christ’s commandments. I know that all who do that will remain in God’s grace even to the consummation of all things.
Rusticus: So you think you will go up to heaven, there to receive a reward?
Justin: I don’t think it, I know it. I have no doubt about it whatsoever.
Rusticus: Very well. Come here and sacrifice to the gods.
Justin: No one in their right mind gives up truth for falsehood.
Rusticus: If you don’t do as I tell you, you will be tortured without mercy.
Justin: We ask nothing better than to suffer for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ and so to be saved. If we do this we can stand confidently and quietly before the fearful judgment seat of that same God and savior, when in accordance with divine ordering all this world will pass away.
And so he was killed. Relics of St. Justin Martyr rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica.
St. Justin the Martyr, you were one of the first thinkers to rationally defend the faith that you gave your life for—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Justin Martyr is in the public domain. Last accessed March 18, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
