[Gospel: Luke 8:26-39 (§38)]
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear father, brothers and sisters:
In today’s Gospel reading we return back to hear a reading we have already heard before told from the perspective of the holy Evangelist Luke rather than Matthew. Earlier in this chapter, our Lord had just been sailing in a boat across the sea of Galilee with his disciples when a major storm arose which terrified them whilst the Saviour slept soundly within the boat. After miraculously stilling the storm, our Lord with his band of disciples arrived in the SE part of the Lake by the pagan region of the Decapolis. This was very much Gentile territory, the place of pigs, demons and all unclean and unholy things which forms the backdrop to our reading today. As is our custom we will again interpret our Gospel reading with the help of our father amongst the saints, St Bede the Venerable of the monasteries of Monkswearmouth and Jarrow.
And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs.
Immediately then, as soon as our Saviour steps foot in this pagan region he is confronted by this poor possessed man, who is represented as being completely alienated from civil society and out of his rational mind. In his commentary on the Gospel, St Bede draws our attention to the deeper spiritual and allegorical meaning of this encounter in the Gospel –
This man becomes a symbol of the Gentile people who were tormented by raving madness for a very long time.
Rather than being an isolated incident, St Bede interprets this event as speaking more broadly about the enslavement of all people that have not been illumined by the Light of Christ and the Gospel. As for the reference to him being naked and without clothes, St Bede interprets that – similar to Adam and Eve in the garden, through the power of the devil over him, the demoniac had lost –
the covering of his nature and virtue … this garment of faith and love.
Then to interpret the reference to the demoniac refraining from abiding in houses, St Bede quotes directly from St Augustine –
He was not resting in his own good conscience as in his own house but in dead deeds, that is, he took pleasure in sins.
When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high?
What is clear from this passage is also how much the demoniac had become not only estranged from society and men, but also estranged from himself. He no longer answers in his own voice, but the demons within him speak for him and identify completely with him. He no longer has any identity apart from them. Yet, paradoxically, it is the demons who see and identify who Christ is with more accuracy and truth than so many of the Scribes, Pharisees and Jewish people and also the infamous heretics of history such as Arius.
How great was the madness of Arius to believe Jesus is a created being and not God, whom the demons believe to be the Son of the most high God, and tremble.
I beseech thee, torment me not. (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.)
This verse shows just how severe this poor man’s possession was and how helpless he was against the power of the demonic forces within him due to the long period of time the demons had taken possession of him. St Bede then makes the more general spiritual point that we should seek to expel the demons and demonic influence as quickly as possible from us, so that they have less damaging impact upon us.
The longer he is accustomed to possess him, the more difficult it is for him to agree to release him. Hence it is very important to study how we ought to stive immediately to avoid his snares, even if, as men, we were overcome by the devil, lest if we are slow to resist his power, his expulsion later on will be more painful.
And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him.
As so often happens in the Gospels, Jesus asks the man’s name here even though He was not in any way actually ignorant of this. He knew exactly what his name was. Again we can see here though, how this demoniac had completely lost his identity, most powerfully represented by the loss of his name to the demons, who again answer for him. St Bede returns once more to the allegorical meaning of this.
But the fact that many demons are reported to have entered the man signifies that the people of the Gentiles had been subjected not to any one idolatrous cult in particular, but to innumerable and various ones.
We can certainly agree here, even in our latter days, that there are a legion of cults, sects and falsehoods that have enslaved so many souls throughout the world, keeping them from the Truth of the Orthodox Faith.
And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.
Again, whilst so many of the people that Christ encounters in the Gospel were ignorant as to His true identity and powers, we can see again that the demons knew exactly who He was and the power that He, as God, had over all creatures and spirits.
The demons knew that the it would someday happen that they would be sent into the abyss by the coming of the Lord; they did not themselves divine what would come to pass, but they recalled what the prophets said about them.
And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them.
It is no coincidence that the demons identify with the animals which had been declared unclean under the Law. The demons thought this would provide an escape, but this actually provides an evangelical opportunity.
He permitted the demons what they asked, so that the killing of the swine might provide an opportunity for salvation to men. For the shepherds, seeing these things, immediately report them to the city.
Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.
It should be noted that impure spirits could not go into the swine, unless the merciful Saviour himself granted this to those who begged him and who he could have banished into the abyss.
When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country. Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.
This depiction of the healing and restoration of the demoniac is a very moving one, and one of the most beautiful scenes I think in the whole Gospel. The one who before had been expelled from society, and chained and left to move amongst the tombs, naked, in distress is now ‘sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind’. What a contrast there is between the peacefulness of this man now at rest with the Lord and the frenzy of the legion of demons and the restlessness of the pagan dwellers of Gadara.
For to sit at the feet of the Lord is for someone to contemplate the footsteps of the Saviour which he should follow … to put on clothing again is to be adorned with a zeal for the virtues which he had lost when he was ensnared.
They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed. Then the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about besought him to depart from them; for they were taken with great fear: and he went up into the ship, and returned back again.
There is something strangely human about this reaction of the people of Gadara. They can see the almighty power that Christ possesses and must not have doubted that this was an extraordinary person that He had such power over so many devils. Yet, they were not prepared to actually take the next step, to receive a welcome Christ to their homes and to their very hearts. They wish rather to keep Him away. It is almost as if they are not ready to face the implications of what believing in Him would mean. Or maybe, it is out of sheer despondency which is how St Bede interprets the Gadarenes rejection of Christ –
The Gerasenes, conscious of their own weakness, concluded that they were unworthy of the presence of the Lord as they could not grasp the word of God, or sustain the weight of wisdom with a mind still infirm.
St Bede here recalls St Peter, who when confronted with the miraculous catch of fish, asked the Lord to ‘Depart from me. For I am a sinful man’.
Now the man out of whom the devils were departed besought him that he might be with him: but Jesus sent him away, saying, Return to thine own house, and shew how great things God hath done unto thee. And he went his way, and published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto him.
This beautiful, final scene of our Gospel reading underlines a simple fact that those who are Christians want to abide with Him, be with Him, all the time. This should make us all pause for thought. How much do we claim to want to be with the Lord, and yet when this opportunity arises, we instead forsake the Lord for so many other worldly cares and meaningless distractions.
Dear ones: today we also commemorate the great monastic and apologist, St Job of Pochaev who laboured in Western Ukraine in the 16th Century. At this tumultuous time in world history, the very Western border of Rus was surrounded on all sides by hostile countries and by new heresies – Roman Catholicism, various types of Protestantism and Uniatism. In spiritual terms we can interpret this as the creeping forces of darkness that comes out of the West, sowing confusion, doubt and false doctrine. St Job bravely stood up to these forces and making use of the new printing presses which Protestantism had used most effectively, St Job in turn used this technology to spread the Light of the Orthodox Tradition throughout Ukraine, Poland and neighbouring regions, encouraging the Orthodox hierarchs, clergy and faithful to stay grounded in the Orthodox, Apostolic Faith that they had received and to return to the Truth, and to their right mind, the ‘Mind of Christ’. On this day when we recall the healing and restoration of the Gadarene demoniac, and as St Bede has illustrated the conversion of the Gentiles from demonic error, let us ask for the prayers of St Job of Pochaev that in our age of spiritual confusion where we are also surrounded by so much spiritual darkness, we will continue to confess our Holy Orthodox Faith and remain “children of the Light”.
Amen.