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.



December 31, 2024

Homily Two for New Years Eve (St. John of Kronstadt)


Homily Two for New Years Eve

By St. John of Kronstadt

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17).

Happy New Year, beloved brothers and sisters!

Sincerely, with all my heart, what should I wish for myself and you in the New Year? This is what: that we all become new, putting off the old. "What is old in us?" – you ask. Of course, sin, passions and wicked inclinations and our creeping various bad habits. All this is decay, which extremely corrupts our souls and bodies, removing them from God and depriving them of peace, health, quietness, freedom, light. For example, if I feel in myself every day a tendency to anger, or envy, pride, or I am really angry, mad, envious, proud, or have a passion for money, food and drink, and the like, then I am not a new, but an old man, not a man of God, but a child of the devil, and only then do I become a new man and a child of God, and not of the devil, when I sincerely repent, pay for my sin, and completely change in my thoughts, feelings, dispositions and inclinations for the better; I will be meek, humble, patient, good-natured, sincerely benevolent to everyone, not covetous, temperate, indifferent and cold to all pleasant food and drink; when I am sincerely, with all my soul merciful, compassionate to all sinners like me, to the unfortunate, to the sick, the poor, when I am almsgiving, in simplicity, willingly, zealously and with constant humility; when I do not lustfully look at corruptible beauty, in whatever it may be: in living persons or things, but I desire and seek with all my might the incorruptible, eternal, uncreated beauty, to delight in it, to admire it, and that which constitutes this beauty: holiness, truth, wisdom, goodness - in a word - God, then I will be a new man. In this sense, I wish with all my soul for myself and you to become new, for the glory of God, and for the salvation and true good of us all and for the confirmation of our hope in eternal life. May God grant that we all be inflamed with the desire for incorruptible and eternal blessings, an eternally new life in heaven, and to despise corruptible blessings that remove us from God, corrupt both our souls and bodies, through our passion for them. Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
 

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