Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



November 20, 2025

Prologue in Sermons: November 20

 
The Sign of the Cross is a Fear for Evil Spirits

November 20*

(From the Life of Saint John Chrysostom)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, discussing the sign of the cross in his thirteenth catechetical sermon, says, among other things, that it is a fear for evil spirits. Is this true?

When Saint John Chrysostom became Patriarch of Constantinople and was once preaching, a demon shook a man possessed by demons in the church, cast him to the ground, and the demon began screaming in such a terrifying voice that everyone in the church was terrified. John ordered the man brought to him, made the sign of the honorable cross on him, and the demon immediately left him. 

Another incident: One of the demonic princes once appeared to the Holy Martyr Justina and tempted her with many words to enter into an unholy marriage. Justina, realizing who was speaking to her, reverently made the sign of the cross on her face without engaging in conversation with the devil, and the devil immediately vanished from her with great shame.

The third incident. One day, the martyr Cyprian, seeing the devil, said to him: "Perpetrator, deceiver, receptacle of all filth! Since I know that you fear the sign of the cross and tremble at the name of Christ, what will become of you if Christ Himself comes? Depart from me, you accursed one; be gone, you lawless one and hater!" Hearing this, the devil rushed at Cyprian to kill him and began to strangle him. Seeing no help from anywhere, Cyprian remembered the power of the sign of the cross against demons and shielded himself with it, and the demon, it is said, "recoiled from him like a darting arrow."

From these examples, as you can see, the words of Cyril of Jerusalem that "the sign of the cross is a fear for evil spirits" become an undeniable truth. And what lesson follows from this for us? Firstly, that, knowing now that the sign of the cross is a fear for evil spirits, we must, in the words of the same Cyril of Jerusalem, make the sign of the cross on ourselves constantly. And let us do so. "Let us make it on our foreheads and on everything: on the bread we eat and on the cups we drink from; let us make it at our entrances, at our exits; when we lie down to sleep and when we rise; when we are on the road and when we rest." And then, secondly, let the above examples teach us to constantly remember that, although evil spirits always seek to do us harm, they can do nothing to us without God's permission and cannot harm pious people who always revere God and do everything with prayer. Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

Notes:

* In the original text, there is no entry for November 20th. There this is the fourth entry for November 13th.
 

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