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In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Dear brothers and sisters,
today in the Sunday's Gospel reading we have heard
the story how the Lord Jesus Christ, having arrived
in the country of Gadarenes, healed the demoniac.
We remember that when the Lord reached the shore, He was
immediately approached by a man who put in fear
that country as he was possessed by demons, he would run
without clothes, live in the tombs and when someone would try to tie him up
with chains and ropes, he would break them. That is, he was possessed by
many demons. He ran up to the Lord and said, "What have I to do with You,
Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me!". Lord expelled from
him demons, and asked, "What is your name?" He said, "Legion",
because there was a lot of demons inside him. And the demons besought the Lord
to command them to enter the pigs, because nearby
a herd of pigs was grazing. And when the Lord allowed
them, the herd ran immediately into the sea and drowned. And the shepherds,
having seen it, fled to the city and told dwellers. People
came, they saw the former demoniac now dressed, in
sound mind, sitting at the feet of the Lord, and they were terrified.
And they began to ask the Lord to leave their
area. And the Lord sent the healed man
to tell everyone, to preach what the Lord did to him.
So this is the story we heard today. Modern Western
post-Christian world, in which we live,
it constantly tries, figuratively speaking, to "neutralize"
the Gospel. That is, so to say, to reduce the Gospel either to a social
program of assistance to the poor, feeding the hungry, or
just present the Gospel as another philosophical
system, and to present the Bible itself as a kind of a book of wisdom,
of which you can simply cite or take
some instructive stories. So today's story
is one of those that the non-Christian world may bring to us
and say, "Do not you see that this is a fairy tale?
Who, when anyone of you has seen not just a demoniac, but such
a demoniac, which would run around with no clothes on, live in
the tombs, be able to break chains and put in fear
the whole town?" In general the modern civilization
in the West struggles by all means to evade looking into
the essence, what evil is. And again, to present
evil just as a lack of something, such as a lack of
good will, i.e. depersonalize evil, to present it abstract as much
as possible.That is, people who say so, they believe
that if to those who commit evil, such as terrorism,
to show good will to them, to build
schools for them, give them books, they will become good
and evil will disappear. Or in extreme cases, people say
that evil is committed because of some difficult circumstances
or in a state of mental disease. Such people
ignore the fact that for example, if we look
at the history of the 20th century, we will see that a huge amount
of evil, the most terrible, was carried out by educated people, gifted [people],
and not at all in a state of mental insanity. That is, when
we are dealing with evil, we are dealing with a completely
irrational force that cannot be explained without
the Church. Only the Christian Orthodox Church is capable of
explaining to us the essence of evil. So, today's Gospel
reading is not an allegory. We know that this has happened
in a particular city, town of Gadarenes. And the Gospel says that
it was a man from the city, livinig not in a house. And people
would come to help him and tie him up so that the demons,
who were in him, would be unable to cause
severe damage. That is, we can assume
that the horror of the situation was also in the fact that people,
it might be, knew this man, that he, might have been,
even a well-known citizen. And then, at some point
he became so possessed by demons, ran away
to the desert, and now he runs around naked and puts
in fear the whole area. The Gospel does not reveal
to us why the demons entered this man. We do not have
a reason to believe that he was the most fierce sinner.
There is another Gospel episode where the Lord heals
a demon-possessed boy. Again, we cannot assume,
that that boy was the worst sinner among others.
The Gospel shows us that to fall under such control
of demons is possible. But we don't know why the Lord permits
demons to possess a man in such a terrible way,
when the demons control hands, feet of a man, his
tongue. The man is not able to call one's soul one's own and loses
a human image. But let's pay attention to such
a fact - the demons are powerless to enter even in pigs. They are asking
the Lord that He allows them. Certainly, they don't have
power all the more so to enter in a man. The Lord, of course,
does not want the demons in humans. So, who then is
the initiator of this? This is of course, man himself. Man
himself invites the dark force in his life, in his soul.
God gave to man a free will. In fact, this is
a part of the likeness of God in us, of the image and likeness of God
in us, that we have free will, which nothing can
break. We always have a choice - to sin or not. And
now, sin is a voluntary assent to evil, voluntary
invitation of evil into your life. Man seems to be saying:
"I know it's wrong, that's bad, that God does not
tell us to live this way. But everybody around lives this way and so it will be
more convenient, it will bring me satisfaction." And the man
deliberately commits a sin; i.e. he seems to be saying that
to live as God, to live in such way is hard. And how to live, how it said by
demons and the devil, to live this way is easier, simpler, clearer and
it brings satisfaction. That is, as the shepherds in this episode,
a man in such a state wants the Lord to leave
him sooner. Because for the man, it is just
uncomfortable, that God is with him. And we know that sin
does not get a possession of a man suddenly. The Holy Fathers in a very
detailed way described to us the steps which are taken
by a sin on the way of getting a possession of a man, if the man
allows it. Demons are trying to put sinful
thoughts in us. And it happens that a person repels them, but it happens as well that
the man accepts them, begins dwelling on them,
looking into them, so to say talking to them, finding in them something
interesting, then he start fantasizing about them.
And in the end, a man becomes possessed by a passion
and he wants to have these sinful intentions to implement.
That is, a sinful thought engenders sinful feeling, a feeling
generates desire, and the desire already generates the action.
The man, as it were, by his will one after another surrenders
these lines of defense - mind, heart, and finally, will.
And then a man who is used to succumbing to a sinful
passion, for example, fornication, he becomes
possessed by it. That is, it can be, it seems to him, that he is
free to behave, in reality
he is absolutely enslaved by it and in nothing, in fact,
he is different from the Gadarene demoniac. He is enslaved
by a sinful passion. Or a man who is obsessed
with anger, or hatred or judgement - he, too, is not free.
So, the Lord in today's Gospel reading shows
to us. There He allowed demons to enter into swines, that we
would see what happens - demons at once, that is, the herd
of pigs immediately ran down into the sea and perished. That is, this is
what would happen to a man obsessed with a sin if
the Lord had not protected him - the person would have immediately perished.
So, dear brothers and sisters, let's take today's Gospel
reading as a reminder to us that evil - it is
neither some abstraction, evil - it's not a lack of something,
but evil is the presence of this personal, irrational,
dark force that wishes to persuade us to listen to it,
let it into our life, into our soul, in order
to control us and force us to completely lose the human
image as happened to the Gadarene demoniac. Only with the help
from the Lord, only by living in the Holy Orthodox Church,
partaking of Holy Communion -- when we attend Church services,
pray, fast, in every way compel ourselves to the pious
life and in every way resist sin -- only in this case
can we resist this dark force by cleansing
our souls, and become in our qualities
like God and thus prepare our souls for eternity. And
let the Lord help us all in this. Amen