Silencing the storm in man
A man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. Let us listen carefully to the description of how this man from Country of the Gergesenes behaved: "he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.” Today, we would like to hear in these sentences a description of psychiatric behavior, one of those characterized by hyperactivity and increased aggressiveness.
However, let us try to look deeper and in the description of this unfortunate man we will see a symbolic abbreviation of asocial and anti-social behavior. The looters who smash cars, shop windows and lanterns, during last so call peaceful demonstration, are generally not mentally ill. Those who introduce socially harmful screams into the media are often people who know the journalistic work very well. Thieves in white gloves who find ways to rob their own society with impunity are usually beyond any suspicion of mental illness.
Basically, it is like this: Reality abhors an emptiness. If we depart from God and do not want to surrender to God's Spirit, then we and our social life are dominated by various unclean spirits - the spirit of selfishness, the spirit of lies and injustice.
Today's Gospel shows that unclean spirits fear the Lord Jesus very much. Why? Because they only feel good where there is no real love. And the Lord Jesus is all Love. I will not draw any practical conclusions here, because everyone can draw them on their own. A word of comment should also be given to the image of driving evil spirits into herd of swine and throwing them into the abyss of the sea. The Lord Jesus has the power to cleanse our environments and our whole earth from these various unclean spirits that make our earth an inhuman place. If we will come closer to the Savior, if we will seek help from Him - the spirit of discord and the spirit of hatred, the spirit of pride and the spirit of contempt for others, the spirit of selfishness and the spirit of injustice would surely leave us. If we will come closer to the Lord Jesus, our world becomes more and more pure and Divine and more and more human.
One more thought
In the passage of today’s Gospel, we heard a lot about uncleanness. The region of the Decapolis where Jesus went is unclean. Pigs are unclean. At that time, these animals could provide security for the Roman army, which made their breeding a doubly disgraceful occupation. In addition, the possessed man lived in the tombs, contact with him will makeunclean and incapable of relationship with God. In the end, man himself had an unclean spirit, and even a whole legion of them. Despite the violent opposition of evil powers, Jesus descends into the core of man's uncleanness, into the very center of storm in the human heart.
Taming the spirit
Man, tormented by hostile powers, was a problem for his surroundings. Many have tried to tame him by putting "fetters and chains" on him. The people of the Decapolis tried to deal with evil only externally. Seeing the evil, they tried to eliminate it through orders and restrictions. Often this is how we try to deal with sins. When we see a liar, we remind him/her that he/she must not lie. When we see an adulterer, we prohibit him/her from committing any further sin. Of course, this does not change anything because most often it is not the conscience of the sinner that is sick. Evil cannot be chained. It is necessary to cast out the evil spirit.
Legion
The first step in Jesus' exorcism was to discover the name of the evil one. Jesus discovers the evil that torments the possessed. This very moment is so painful that we usually avoid it. When we try to name the evil in ourselves and confess it to God, we experience such tensions that we often run away from this moment. In such moments, we use euphemisms, hoping that God knows what ails us.
The word that heals
Another element of exorcism is the word. Jesus does not follow any complicated procedure to overpower an impure spirit. He just says it. The Word of God is a powerful weapon that evil cannot resist. The final result of the meeting of the evil spirit with the power of God's word is a man who " sitting there clothed and in his right mind." Like Mary in Bethany, the man freed from the evil spirit sits with Jesus as one of his disciples. Listening to the Word of God, he regains his sanity. After calming the storm on the Lake, Jesus silenced another one that touched the human heart.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george