Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
From the Prophet Job: “The life of man upon the earth is a warfare [test/trial], . . . .” (Jb. 7:1).
From St. Paul the Apostle: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ep. 6:12).
And, from the Apostle and Rock of our one, holy, catholic, and apostolic confession, St. Peter: “Be sober [self-controlled], be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pe. 5:8).
At this time of year, it is providential perhaps that we hear the Gospel account of the Gadarene demoniac, coupled with the upcoming commemoration of the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and All the Bodiless Hosts (Powers) of Heaven on 8 November, at a time when our culture will be or is focused on the dark side of All Hallows’ Eve, aka, Halloween. What began as a Christian festival in the Western Church somehow got co-opted by the world that chooses now to fixate on ghouls and goblins and the darker aspects of the unseen realm of spirits. As Christians, we should, by all rights, refuse to glorify the gore of Halloween and bask in its fixation on the dark and evil spirits whose singular goal is mankind’s utter destruction, epitomized by the demon-possessed man in today’s Gospel. We must be wary to simply accept the world’s explanation that this is all harmless fun intended to delight children. We should remember how the devil – the prince of all fallen angels – sold his bill of goods to Eve in the Garden, convincing her that she misunderstood what God had said about partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Indeed, she beheld that tree before her and saw that, in fact, “it was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and . . . to be desired to make one wise.” And so, both she and her husband ate the bait; the fishhook was set by the evil one; death ensued upon all creation, sparing nothing; and the evil one became the prince and the power of this world. At that moment, mankind was stripped naked of the garment of his divine dignity, exposed and made ashamed by those very powers of his downfall that had promised him good things but lied to him. The old bait and switch! And, the fallen couple, along with all their progeny, hid from God Who came looking for them in order to commune with them, after which they were forced to abandon Paradise and their communion with God, and to live out their earthly days shackled to death and the grave (Gn. 3:1-24; WS 1:13-15; 2:23-24; Hb. 2:14-15).
I would suggest to us this morning, the story of the demon-possessed man in the Gospel is an icon of the Genesis account. It captures starkly the utter devastation of the Fall. It exposes the superficiality of our existence despite all the window dressing of our lives. Although not all of us are possessed by demons like this man and the other demoniacs accounted for throughout our Lord’s holy ministry, we all are nonetheless oppressed by the powers of sin, death, and the devil and we all share in the final demonic result: Hell! That is, without our Lord’s divine intervention. All of us, to lesser or greater degree, suffer the ravages of these lying powers. Why there are some who are taken over by demons – this poor man by a legion of them, meaning several thousand! – the Fathers are inclined to say it is permitted by God Who limits the forces of sin, death, and the devil, so as to teach us and to show us just how desperate our sinful condition really is without the prevenient and intervening grace of God that preserves His creation! Beneath the façade of our own flesh and without the hand of God, that wretched, benighted, death-loving Gadarene man is indeed us! We may take solace in that we aren’t experiencing what he is experiencing, nevertheless we find ourselves equally trapped by the same powers manifested by our seemingly insatiable appetite to partake of the very things God in His love for mankind has warned us about! If you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, no matter how lovely and benign it appears, you will die! If you continue to indulge your sexual appetites, you will die! If you continue to lie, to steal, and to cheat, you will die! All of these things may feel okay. In fact, we can even dress them up and rationalize them to the point that they’re actually quite harmless in our thinking. But, if we persist in them and do not repent, we will die because they are the snares of the demons, as Sacred Scripture teaches us, and they are full of the bondage of death because they cut us off from God!
Our fallen situation, without the intervention of our Lord Jesus Christ, is dire and hopeless! But, thanks be to God Who has come – Who has invaded the land of our darkness and the bondage of our death – to deliver us from the clutches of the evil one! Thanks be to God Who, despite sin, nonetheless comes in search of His wayward sons and daughters, Who comes seeking to heal His divine image in us and to restore us to divine fellowship, Who comes to open again the doors of Paradise! Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became Man” (Nicene Creed). God has come into our very midst in the flesh to do one thing and one thing only: to destroy the works of the devil and to save and restore His broken creatures, “’to open [our] eyes, in order to turn [us] from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that [we] may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in [Jesus Christ]’” (Ac. 26:18; Hb,. 2:14-15; 1 Jn. 3:8). Our God is the God of the living and not of the dead, and so He has come to raise us up to new and Everlasting Life. The demons fear it. The devil loathes it. And the people of the countryside, who prefer darkness to light, falsehood to Truth (Jn. 3:16-21), instead of giving thanks [i.e., making Eucharist], implore our Lord instead to depart despite the liberation of the demoniac in their midst. “’It [is meet and] right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found’” (Lk. 15:32; Anaphora/Sursum Corda).
The joy of salvation is seemingly lost on those poor benighted souls who pray the Lord to leave them. They cannot bring themselves to rejoice with him who rejoices (Rm. 12:15) nor can they take delight in the good thing God has done. But, none of this is not lost on the now set free demoniac whose life has been given back to him by the hand of the Lord. Clothed in divine dignity and restored in his right mind, he yearns to follow Jesus and he prays that Jesus may allow him to do so. But, our Lord has other plans for him. “’Return to your own house,’” Jesus instructs, “’and tell what great things God has done.’” Go home and speak of God’s great grace. Return to Paradise, Adam and Eve, and give God thanks and praise. The man, like his ancient ancestors, Adam and Eve, has been restored to priesthood to stand in the midst of the world and there to reveal God’s great goodness! He has been made anew – a new creation in Jesus Christ (2 Cr. 5:17; Ga. 6:15) – to be a man of worship – of the worship of God which is the plague of the demons. In being faithful and true, then, to the salvation given to him, he will drive back the darkness of sin, death, and the devil by the offering up of the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. He will indeed follow Jesus as he had desired to do, but he will do so on the Lord’s terms and in his own place. Perhaps those who implored Jesus to leave might be converted through this man’s witness to “’all the great things God has done’”?
This is precisely what St. Peter envisions for us, the baptized, for the Church. Those who have tasted that the Lord indeed is gracious come to Him Who has been rejected and despised by men, yet He is chosen by God and precious. Thus, as living stones of the one true Living Stone, Jesus Christ, we are “being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. . . . But you are a chosen generation,” the Apostle declares, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pe. 2:1-10). We are reminded that once we were not a people, far from the Covenant of God and estranged from Him due to our sin, “hopeless and without God in the world,” Paul says (Ep. 2:11-18). But, now, by His inestimable grace and love, we are the people of God, His sons and daughters, heirs and co-heirs with Jesus Whose blood has healed us and has brought us near unto God, so that even now the Holy Spirit of God dwells in us (Rm. 5:5; 8:9; 1 Cr. 3:16; 6:19-20; 2 Cr. 6:16), possessing and being possessed. Once we were without mercy, but now through Jesus Christ the Son of God our Saviour, we have obtained the mercy of God. All of this that we, too, might follow Jesus, make Eucharist in the House of our God, and proclaim all the great things God has done, is doing, and will do.
Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
PROPERS:
Ga. 2:16-20
Lk. 8:26-39