Faith and Unbelief

A Word for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Today there was read the Gospel of the healing by Jesus Christ of the demon-possessed lunatic, and at the very end of the Gospel—the Lord’s foretelling of His sufferings and death in Jerusalem[1]. The Gospel shows how strong a man can be through faith in the Lord—namely, so strong that he can even move mountains—and how weak, powerless, and pitiable an unbelieving man is, for he becomes a wretched plaything of the demons and of the passions, his own and those of others; it also shows the great power of prayer and fasting, when they go hand in hand, strengthening one another.

In this Gospel you see with the eyes of your mind an unhappy father, worn out by the sufferings of his wretched demon-possessed son, whom from childhood an evil spirit dreadfully tormented at the new moons and often cast, now into fire, now into water. The father entreats mercy of the Lord, that He may heal his son, adding that the Lord’s disciples, whom he had asked about this, could not heal him. The Lord, having denounced and reproached the people with His righteous word for their unbelief and perverseness, orders the demon-possessed man to be brought to Him, and at once heals him with a single word of command. What is this demon-possessed lunatic? He is a man subject to the action of the evil spirit that tormented at the new moons—from a treacherous design, so that people would ascribe this evil not to him, the evil spirit, but to the creation of God, which is guilty of nothing—the moon—and would thus utter blasphemy against the Creator of the moon. This is how St Chrysostom interprets it. Evil spirits, in inflicting manifold harm on people, want to conceal from people their destructive actions, so that people may not come to hate them and turn away wholly from them and from their destructive deeds—and so that they may cast their slander upon the beautiful and greatly beneficial creation of God—the moon, the luminary of the night. But the evil spirit cannot hide with all his ruinous wiles! A man enlightened by God will recognize his mischief at once and destroy it by the grace of God. Unbelievers, however, are not on their guard; to this very day they are caught in his snares and suffer from him, like the lunatic of whom we have spoken.

And how many in our age, the age of unbelief and depravity, are people exposed to the cunning, the mockery and the malice of the evil spirits! I mean all those given over to drunkenness, to unhappy and mad fleshly love—or more precisely, fleshly passion; all the so-called nihilists, who, having lost the most precious treasure of humanity—faith—do not believe in the life to come and in the immortality of our soul, do not expect the resurrection of the dead and the universal judgment, who do not believe in the very existence of God, nor in His eternal truth, nor in His terrible, unbribable justice, and—to their deepest misfortune—do not even believe in the evil spirits. These unhappy, strayed people, entangled in the enemy’s nets, often, like the demoniac mentioned in the Gospel, resort as well now to fire, now to water—that is, to a firearm in order to shoot themselves, or to drowning, or to hanging. And mark precisely what an evil contagion this violent, dreadful death has become today! Every day people shoot themselves, or drown themselves, or hang themselves, or murder others. By many, human life is not counted worth a half-penny. What is the dread cause here? What terrible lever drives these unhappy ones to a violent death? First—unbelief and a depraved or perverted life; second—the evil demons, the primordial murderers of the human race. I myself have heard from many unhappy people given over to drunkenness or to despondency because of some grievous circumstances, that an evil demon whispers insistently to them: hang yourself, hang yourself! or: drown yourself, drown yourself! or: shoot yourself, shoot yourself! or: kill such-and-such a person. O wretched adversary! How many human souls, Christian souls, have you destroyed by violent death in the ill-fated nineteenth century through your all-destroying spiritual delusion? They are guilty in that they were beguiled by your cunning, but you are a thousand times more guilty, and for all your devastations you will receive recompense from the righteous Judge in the day of recompense. What, then, is the remedy against these enemies, who delude, torment and destroy? Faith in Christ, who trampled the power of the devil by the Cross—and fasting and prayer. Prayer and fasting cleanse, enlighten and strengthen the soul; on the contrary, without prayer and fasting our soul is an easy prey to the devil, because it is not fenced off nor defended against him. Fasting and prayer are the spiritual weapons against the devil; that is why the Lord says in today’s Gospel that this kind of demon goes out only by prayer and fasting. Holy Church, knowing the power of this spiritual weapon, calls us to fast twice every week—on Wednesday and Friday—among other reasons in remembrance of the sufferings and death of our Savior, and many times in the year during all the multi-day fasts, joining to Great Lent in particular special, compunction-filled prayers of repentance. Fasting and prayer have this spiritual benefit: while strengthening our souls, they strengthen within us faith itself, hope and love, and unite us with God.

In the Gospel read today, the Lord’s rebuke of His disciples for unbelief is remarkable. Could it be that even the apostles wavered in faith at first? Yes, even they were sometimes weak, before the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them—now they believed, and then at times they fell into unbelief and little faith; at the very least, this must be said of the nine, apart from the three so-called pillars of the faith: Peter, James and John. By faith they healed every kind of sickness, raised the dead, cleansed lepers, cast out demons; and when grace departed from any of them on account of little faith and unbelief, then they could not even cast out demons, as indeed is mentioned in today’s Gospel. That is why the Lord, through them and through all of us, teaches us to have faith without doubting, and says: If you will have faith as a mustard seed and say to this mountain: move from here to there, then it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. Truly, all who truly believed, all the saints, worked many miracles by faith; by faith they made the impossible possible. Read the accounts of their lives—and you will see for yourselves how strong faith is! And yet the people of our age flaunt it and boast of unbelief! Is this an enlightened age? What! We owe every success of enlightenment in all its branches to our faith, which poured abundant light into human minds and into all the sciences, and we ourselves reject that faith? Do children reject their own mother, who bore them and brought them up? How insane and how ungrateful!

Brethren and sisters, treasure your faith! Guard your faith. Without faith there is no salvation; without faith a person will perish forever. Amen.