Joy of All Who Sorrow

Homily on the 5th Sunday after Pentecost: The Healing of the Gergasenes’ demoniacs & The Fathers of the First Six Oecumenical Councils and St Vladimir

[Gospel: Matt. 8:28-9:1 (§28)]

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear Father, brothers and sisters: Spraznecom! Happy Feast!

For our main Sunday Gospel we hear the story of the healing of the two Gergasenes’ demonaics at the very end of chapter eight of St Matthew’s Gospel. As you will recall last week we heard of the extraordinary faith and humility of the Centurion who was so convinced of Christ’s power and his own unworthiness that he would not deign to have Christ enter his home, but rather asked that he heal his servant by command. This week we hear of another miracle of healing through the exorcism of these two demonaics who have been possessed of a huge multitude of demons. Due to the crowds that were now following him wherever he went, our Lord asks to leave Capernauum and to go to the other side of Sea of Galilee to what the evangelist refers to as ‘the country of the Gergesenes’. In the writings of Origen and Eusebius, the location of this miracle is identified as occurring near the town of Gergesa, in what is today known as Kersa. This village is situated on the Eastern shoreline of the Sea of Galilee and in Byzantine times a church was built to commemorate this Gospel miracle of the Saviour. From chapter eight we know that before landing in Gergesa, the boat that the disciples and our Lord had been travelling in had got blown off course in a huge storm which had been miraculously calmed by Jesus who had been awakened from sleep by his terrified disciples.

Last year to interpret our Gospel reading we used the homilies of St John Chrysostom who was renowned for his Antiochian literal school of biblical interpretation. This year, by contrast, we will use the commentary of the fourth century Western Father, St Hiliary of Poitiers who wrote a more allegorical and spiritual interpretation of St Matthew’s Gospel. Finally, we will connect St Hiliary’s exegesis of our Gospel reading to the two other commemorations today: the Commemoration of the Fathers of the First Six Oecumenical Councils and the Baptism of Rus.

And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.

The start of our Gospel reading could cause some confusion as it mentions there being two demonaics where as in the other synoptic gospels – Gospels of Mark and Luke – we only hear of one mentioned. The Fathers are clear, however, that this is not a separate miracle, but the same miracle being described. There were two demonaics but in the other gospels they focused in on the demoniac that had the more severe possession.

St Hilary begins his more spiritualized interpretation of our Gospel passage by returning to the postdiluvian division of mankind after the Flood where the whole world was repopulated by the sons of the Righteous Noah.

In the beginning of the human race, it was divided into three parts, specifically, from the sons of Noah according to the prophecy of Genesis.

According to the Book of Genesis, Noah’s three sons were Shem, Ham and Japeth. As St Hiliary identifies, ‘Shem was chosen to be God’s possession’ and from Shem was born Abraham and the whole of the People of Israel. In our story, St Hiliary identifies the city – the village of Gergesa – as representing the home of the people of Shem, the People of Israel. However, located outside of this city, our Saviour then comes across these two terribly afflicted demonaics.

As St Hiliary says,

‘outside the city, that is, outside the Synagogue of the Law and the prophets, the demons bound fast two men among the tombs. These are the origin of the two races who occupied the places of the deceased and the remains of the dead.

In St Hiliary’s spiritual interpretation therefore these two demonaics represent the multitude of descendents of the other children of Noah, Ham and Japeth, who did not become part of the People of Israel but were in spiritual darkness, deceived by cruel demons.

St Hilary sees that the way the men come towards Jesus,

Is a way of indicating the desire of those who hasten to salvation.

And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

However, despite the desire of these two unfortunate men for Christ, for the Truth, the demons within them and who, in their possessed state, speak for them, complain why our Lord was tormenting them ‘before the time’, that is before the Last Judgment. It is then that the demons spot this large of herd of pigs.

And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go.

St Hilary then interprets thee herd of swine as representing ‘the mass of the Sadducees … who are derived from Shem, whose heresy from amoung the Jews is the sacrilege of denying the resurrection. St Hilary thus interprets the demons’ desire to go out of the demonaics and into the pigs as indicating their desire to go from the benighted pagans to the deceived Jewish heretics.

And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

St Hilary underlines that when the demons entered the pigs they were led, by demonic impulse, down into the waters of the sea where they all perished. He thus sees that the end of heresy is the same as that of paganism, in the same way that the two men were dwelling zombie-like amongst the dead, the heretics were also led to a spiritual death and emptiness apart from Christ.

And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils. And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.

And then we come to the final scene of our reading, with the swine herd owners and keepers fleeing to the city, the village of Gergesa to say what had happened. But instead of this leading the people of the city, in St Hiliary’s interpretation, the people of Shem, the people of Israel, recognizing Christ, as the Son of God, instead we see that they reject Him to His face.

The Jewish people who, once they heard about the works of Christ, came out against their Lord, preventing him from reaching their borders and their city (for, in fact, the Law does not accept the Gospels).

And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.

There is something so pitiable, so tragic about this ending to our story, of Christ coming to his own, only then to be rejected. As it says in the Prologue of St John’s Gospel –

He came unto His own, and his own received him not.

St Hiliary completes his allegory by interpreting this final verse with its reference to the ‘ship’ and his ‘own city’, the town of Capernaum.

The city is the faithful people of God. It was in this place, therefore, that he boarded the ship, that is the Church.

As I mentioned at the start of my homily, today we also commemorate the Fathers of the first Six Oecumenical Councils as well as the Baptism of Rus under Prince Vladimir or Basil in holy Baptism. Let us relate our reading today with its allegorized interpretation to these two additional feasts. Our feast of the Fathers is in many ways an unusual commemoration in that, as we all know, the Orthodox Church upholds the teachings and canons of the Seven Oecumenical Councils. Thus, the fact that the Seventh Council is excluded from today’s feast points to the antiquity of this commemoration which presumably was established somewhere between the Sixth Oecumenical Council in 680AD – 681AD and the Seventh which held in 787AD. As a matter of interest today’s feast is only found in the Russian Typikon and is not commemorated by the Greek church

As St Hilary reminds us in his interpretation of the Gospel reading, the Church from the very earliest times has been thought of as a boat, as an ark, a new ark of Noah, the ark of salvation. Indeed, in the Church the faithful stand in the Nave, which comes from the Latin navis meaning ship. Inside the ark of the Church there is protection in being close to Christ and His saints, protection from the winds and waves of this world. It is the Holy Fathers, as the successors of the Apostles who steer and sail the ark of the Church. Inside the church there is Life, outside in the waters there is the real threat of spiritual death. It is important that we understand that the Oeumenical Councils were not abstruse theological talking shops, but were called as a matter of spiritual Life and death, to prevent the ark of the Church from going off-course, or taking on water and sinking. Whether it was in ensuring that the Church upheld the proper understanding of the full equality and consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, as in the First Council in Nicea, or in affirming the co-equality and co-divinity of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son as at the Second Oecumenical Council at Constantinople – these are not arbitrary issues but right at the heart of our faith – matters of Life and Death or Light and Darkness.

Finally, we come to our second commemoration the Feast of St Vladimir, Enlightener of the Land of Rus. St Vladimir who was born in 978 was not the first to become an Orthodox Christian in the land of Rus. His grandmother Olga, whose memory we celebrated just this past Wednesday, was baptized in Constantinople in 957 and St Vladimir also heard of the martyrdom of Sts Theodore and John by his pagan subjects. Up until the time of his baptism, St Vladimir had followed the pagan religion, which at this time also included idolatry as well as human sacrifice. However, following the example of his Grandmother and intrigued by the faith of St Theodore and John, the Prince began to look for a new religion to unite the people of the expanding territories of Rus. He thus sent emissaries to enquire about the other religions throughout the world and when they came back they gave the now famous report.

‘When we journeyed among the Bulgars, we beheld how they worship in their temple, called a mosque, while they stand ungirt. The Bulgar bows, sits down, looks hither and thither like one possessed, and there is no happiness among them, but instead only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good. Then we went among the Germans, and saw them performing many ceremonies in their temples; but we beheld no glory there. Then we went to Greece, and the Greeks (including the Emperor himself) led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.’

Interestingly, of course, at this time, in the 10th century the Germans were still in Communion with the other ancient Patriarchates. However, it is clear that the emissaries were not inspired by the Roman celebration of the Mass, and providentially it was the beauty and glory of the Byzantine celebration of the Divine Liturgy which converted them. Recalling St Hiliary of Poitiers’ division of humanity into Orthodox Christian, heretics and pagans, it was the example of the True Faith in its fullness, Orthodox Christianity, that proved life-giving and healing. Whilst it was the pigs, in our Gospel reading, that ended up drowning in the sea, it was through the waters of the River Dneiper that St Vladimir’s subjects were illumined and baptized. Following his baptism and marriage to the Byzantine Christian princess Ann that his Kingdom was transformed, he gave up his concubines, and ordered all the idols and pagan temples to be destroyed and to be replaced with churches.

My dear Father, brothers and sisters: let us give thanks for the work of the holy God-bearing Fathers of the First Six Oecumenical councils by whose teachings the Church has been kept safe from the teaching of heretics and preserved the glory and beauty of Christ, by which St Vladimir as well as us, his spiritual descendants, have found the True Faith.

Amen.