New Booklet Offer and Other Updates

Dear Readers:

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 booklet 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, and especially timely for the Christmas season.

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 booklet). 

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Christmas and Moses

By Archimandrite Vassilios Bakoyiannis

Jesus is called the “son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:2) because He was born from Abraham’s lineage. He was born a Jew thanks to Abraham.

Abraham’s descendants left Canaan, Abraham’s homeland, and migrated to Egypt, where they remained for four hundred years (Acts 7:6). When the right time came, the Lord led them back to Canaan, today’s Israel, for one single purpose: to prepare the “ground” for Christ’s birth.

It was a journey undertaken and carried out by God through Moses. God Himself provided for the Israelites’ food; every morning they found their meal at the door of their tent (Exod. 16:35). Their clothes and shoes never wore out, and their feet never developed calluses (Deut. 8:4; Num. 12:3). And there were many other wondrous and unprecedented things like these.

Contemporary Arianism (St. Justin Popovich)

Contemporary Arianism 

By St. Justin Popovich

Arianism has not yet found its grave; today it is more contemporary and more widespread than ever. Like a soul, it is diffused throughout the body of today’s Europe. Scrape away its culture — and at its bottom Arianism lies hidden: for everything has been reduced to man — everything, including the God-man Christ. On the leaven of Arianism, Europe’s philosophy has risen and been permeated, as have its science, its civilization, and partly even its religion. Everywhere and systematically the Lord Jesus Christ is reduced to a man. The God-man is constantly disincarnated, the work of Arius being ceaselessly carried on. Kant’s “Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason” is nothing other than a new edition of Arianism. Apply Kant’s measure to Christ — what do you think will result? You will get Christ-the-man, Christ-the-sage, but never Christ-the-God-man. Apply Bergson’s criterion to the Lord Christ, and you will scarcely obtain anything more than an ordinary man. Thus both the first criterion and the second, and indeed all the criteria of all philosophies, reduce the God-man Christ to a man. European science does not lag behind philosophy in its Arian attitude toward Christ. In many of its champions Protestantism has surpassed Arius himself in Arianism. Various kinds of Socinians and Schleiermachers are powerful rivals of Arius in disincarnating the incarnate God. Papism owes much of its ethics to Arius; does it perceive the metaphysics underlying this terrible ethic? All this together has managed to infect broad European masses with Arianism. Who does not know the vulgar Arianism of our intelligentsia; to whom have many of our intellectuals not declared with full seriousness: Christ is a great man, a wise man, the greatest philosopher, but by no means God.

Holy Five Martyrs of Sebaste Resource Page

Sts. Eustratios, Auxentios, Eugenios, Mardarios and Orestes (Feast Day - December 13)

Verses

Eustratios and his fellow contestants two times two,
Were killed once by the two means of fire and sword.
On the thirteenth Eustratios and those with him were slain by the sword.

 

Holy Martyrs Eustratios, Auxentios, Eugenios, Mardarios and Orestes 

 

December: Day 13: Holy Martyrs Eustratios, Auxentios, Eugenios, Mardarios and Orestes

 

Prologue in Sermons: December 13

 

Holy Five Martyrs of Sebaste in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church 
 

Two Miracles of the Holy Five Martyrs of Sebaste

 

The Appearance of Five Holy Martyrs To A Girl Who Wanted to Have a Certainty of Eternity  

Holy Five Martyrs of Sebaste in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

These five martyrs were Cappadocians by origin, in the time of Diocletian, who from their ancestors honored Christ, though in a hidden manner. At a certain moment they confessed their faith openly and with boldness; for this reason they were subjected to many kinds of tortures by the governor Lysias. Three of them died under the tortures, while Eustratios and Orestes survived and were sent to Sebaste, to the administrator of all the East, Agrikolaos, who ordered that they be thrown into the fire in the year 296, where they met their end. Eustratios was a learned man and a master of the art of rhetoric, first among the officials of Lysias and holding the office of chartophylax in his province, an office which in Latin is called scriniarius. In the name of Saint Eustratios is attributed the prayer that is said at the Saturday Midnight Office, "Magnifying, I magnify You, O Lord…," just as to Saint Mardarios is attributed the prayer said at the Third Hour and elsewhere, "Master God, Father Almighty…."