The Sign of the Cross is a Fear for Evil Spirits
November 20*
(From the Life of Saint John Chrysostom)
By Archpriest Victor Guryev
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.
