An Instruction for the 23rd Sunday After Pentecost, on the Healing of the Demon-Possessed Man

Today, my brothers, there was read the Gospel of how the Lord Jesus Christ healed a demon-possessed man in the country of the Gadarenes, casting out of him, by His own divine authority, an entire legion of demons, who had tormented him for a long time; a legion, by the Roman reckoning of that time, contained six thousand. This means that the Lord cast six thousand demons out of the demon-possessed man. A great number! And such a number in a single person! My God! A single demon can do a person harm without measure, and here there were six thousand demons. Why, they could long ago have brought this pitiable man to his end. How, then, did they not torment him to death, did they not destroy him, before the Lord finally cast them out? Of course, by the power of God they could not do this, since God permitted them to torment the demon-possessed man only as much as was necessary, by divine justice, for his own admonition and for the instruction of the other people—the pagans living in that region—as to what grievous punishment would befall them from God, if they did not turn from their idols to the true God and repent of their own sins. Such, brothers, is the Lord’s authority over demons! They can work their own mischief in people only as much as the Lord permits them—not one iota more. Nor do they have any power over animals either, unless the Lord permits them to enter into them and torment them; this is evident from the fact that the demons asked the Lord’s permission to enter the herd of swine, and this was permitted them—and no sooner had He permitted them to enter the swine than the whole herd rushed down the steep place into the sea and drowned. If such power over people had been given to demons by God, they would, within a few hours—what am I saying, within a few minutes—destroy the entire human race, on account of their own inherent malice toward it. But the Lord restrains them, for the whole dark, satanic kingdom obeys His majesty with fear. See how the demons fell before Christ; see how the demon-possessed man, possessed by them for a long time, on seeing Him, cried out, and said in a loud voice: what have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High? I implore You, he says, do not torment me. — For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. And, in order to show clearly to the people and disciples present that an evil power was in the demon-possessed man, the Lord asked the demon: what is your name? He said: legion, because many demons had entered him. And they begged Jesus that He would not command them to go out into the abyss. They must find it there dull, stifling, tormenting, unbearable!

But now let me turn to myself, and to you, brothers: are we too not sometimes subject to our own kind of raging? Let us be candid: as sinful people, we too suffer, at times, from a kind of raging—for instance, when we grow angry, when we envy, when we are hardhearted toward our neighbors, stingy, fond of money, and the rest. In us there dwells a countless multitude of passions, and therefore our own legions of demons too. So, for instance, in us too there is a demon of delusion, a demon of cunning, a demon of extortion, a demon of falsehood and deceit; a demon of fornicating impurity; a spirit of ill will, malice, enmity, envy, a spirit of estrangement from God, of division from one another, a spirit of self-indulgence or gluttony and various whims; a spirit of idleness and laziness; a spirit of vanity and vainglory; a spirit of blasphemy, abuse, obstinacy, harshness, a spirit of impatience, foul speech, and every absurdity in our thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds; a spirit of drunkenness, a spirit of unruliness and sedition; a spirit of condemning and thinking ill of our neighbors; a spirit of ill will and malice toward our neighbors; a spirit of confusion, fear, and faintheartedness, of impatience and despair; a spirit of distraction and frivolity; a spirit of mockery; a spirit of insubordination and willfulness; a spirit of doubt and unbelief; a spirit of suspicion and distrust; a spirit of caprice and foolish discontent; a spirit of aversion to prayer and to the praise of God, and, in general, to the service of God, to the reading of the Word of God and other spiritual books, and, on the contrary, a spirit of attachment to reading vain or empty, useless books, feeding only idle curiosity and the passions, and so on, and so on. If we look carefully and impartially into our own soul, into its thoughts, feelings, habits, passions, weaknesses—in short, into the whole course of our inward and outward life—we will find that a multitude of passions, and consequently of demons too, live and act within us, and that all of us, in one way or another, become, from time to time, a workshop of the devil, in the words of a certain holy father, or a workhouse for him.

What, then, my brothers? What are we to do, who suffer from the mischief of demons? Let us take refuge daily, in repentance, in the Lord, who came «to destroy the works of the devil» (1Jn 3:8) and to save us from his dominion and his bondage—praying earnestly to Him, that He grant us the grace to love righteousness, every righteousness, and to hate lawlessness; that He grant us the will and the strength, the understanding and the wisdom, to love Him, the Lord, with all our heart and all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves. For love, love alone, «is the fulfillment of the whole law» (Rom 13:10). Let us avoid self-indulgence, self-love, attachment to the perishable goods of this world, which is nearing its end: for from attachment to them come all our sins, and because of them we labor for the bodiless enemy, just as the inhabitants of the country of the Gadarenes, loving and grieving for their own swine, drowned in the sea, begged the Lord to depart from them. Is this not, in truth, how all who ardently love earthly goods speak in their own thoughts: depart from us, O Lord; let us enjoy earthly goods, they are dearer, more precious to us than You. Yes, this is truly what happens with many, in fact; for attachment to earthly, perishable goods is a scourge and the uprooting of love for God and neighbor. Amen.