A Word for the Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

Today the Gospel was read of Jesus Christ’s healing of the demon-possessed epileptic boy, and, right at the end of the Gospel, of the Lord’s prediction of His own sufferings and death in Jerusalem. The Gospel shows how strong a person can become through faith in the Lord—so strong, indeed, that he can even move mountains—and how weak, powerless, and pitiable an unbelieving person is, for he becomes a pitiable plaything of demons and of his own passions and those of others; it also shows the great power of prayer and fasting, when they go hand in hand, mutually strengthening one another.

Let us repeat this Gospel, that it may be more firmly fixed in your memory. When Jesus Christ, with His disciples, after the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, came «to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying: Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him. Then Jesus answered and said: O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me. And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said: why could we not cast it out? So Jesus said to them: because of your unbelief; for truly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. While they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them: the Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up» (Mt 17:14-23). Here today’s Gospel ends.

You see, with the eyes of your mind, in this Gospel, an unhappy father, worn out by the sufferings of his unhappy demon-possessed son, whom, from childhood, an evil spirit fearfully tormented at the new moon, casting him often now into fire, now into water. The father begs mercy of the Lord, that He would heal his son, adding that the Lord’s disciples, whom he had asked to do this, could not heal him. The Lord, having exposed and reproached the people with His righteous word for their unbelief and depravity, bids the demon-possessed boy be brought to Him, and at once heals him with a single word of rebuke. What is this demon-possessed epileptic? He is a person subjected to the action of an evil spirit that tormented him at the new moon—by a cunning device, so that this evil might be ascribed not to the evil spirit itself, but to the moon, an innocent creature of God, and so that blasphemy might be uttered against the Creator of the moon. So Saint Chrysostom explains it.

Evil spirits, in causing manifold harm to people, wish to conceal from people their own destructive actions, so that people will not come to hate them and turn away entirely from them and from their destructive deeds—and so they turn their wiles instead against a beautiful and most useful creation of God, the moon, that light of the night. But an evil spirit cannot hide its destructive wiles forever! A person enlightened by God at once recognizes its malice, and by God’s grace destroys it. Unbelievers, however, are careless; they continue to this day to be caught in its snares and to suffer from it, like the epileptic just mentioned. And how many such demon-possessed people are there in our own age, an age of unbelief and depravity? I call demon-possessed all who are given over to drunkenness, to unhappy and senseless carnal love—or, more precisely, to carnal passion—all the so-called nihilists, who, having lost the most precious human treasure, faith, do not believe in the life to come and in the immortality of our soul, do not look for the resurrection of the dead and the universal Judgment, who do not believe in the very existence of God, and in His eternal righteousness, and in His fearsome, incorruptible justice, and, to their still greater misfortune, do not even believe in evil spirits. These unhappy, wandering people, entangled in the snares of the enemy, not infrequently, like the demon-possessed boy mentioned in the Gospel, resort likewise now to fire, now to water—that is, to firearms, in order to shoot themselves, or to drowning, or to hanging. And notice what a truly evil epidemic this violent, terrible death has become in our own day! Every day people either shoot themselves, or drown themselves, or hang themselves, or kill others. Human life is, by many, not valued at a farthing. What, then, is the terrible cause of this? What dreadful lever drives these unhappy people to violent death? It is, first, unbelief and a depraved or perverted life, and, second, evil demons, the primeval murderers of the human race. I myself have heard from many unhappy people, given over to drinking bouts or to despondency because of some grievous circumstance, that an evil demon whispers persistently to them: hang yourself, hang yourself! or: drown yourself, drown yourself! or: shoot yourself, shoot yourself! or: kill so-and-so. O accursed adversary! How many human, Christian souls have you destroyed, in this ill-fated nineteenth century, by violent death, through your all-destroying delusion? They are guilty for having been seduced by your cunning, but you are a thousand times more guilty, and for all your destructions you will receive your due from the righteous Judge on the day of recompense.

What, then, is the remedy against these enemies—these seducers, tormentors, and destroyers? — Faith in Christ, who by the Cross trampled down the power of the devil, and fasting and prayer. Prayer and fasting cleanse, enlighten, and strengthen the soul; on the contrary, without prayer and fasting our soul is easy prey for the devil, because it is not fenced about and defended against him. Fasting and prayer are spiritual weapons against the devil, and this 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 twice every week to fasting—on Wednesday and Friday, among other things in remembrance of the sufferings and death of our Savior—and many times over throughout the year, during all the extended fasts, and joins the great fast especially with tender, penitential prayers. Fasting and prayer bring also this spiritual benefit, that, in strengthening our souls, they strengthen in us faith, hope, and love itself, and unite us with God.

Remarkable, in today’s Gospel, is the Lord’s exposure of His own disciples for their unbelief. Did even the Apostles, at first, waver in faith? Yes, even they were at times weak, before the Holy Spirit descended upon them—now believing, now, at other times, falling into unbelief and little faith; at least this must be said of the nine, excluding the three so-called pillars of the faith: Peter, James, and John. By faith they healed every sickness, raised the dead, cleansed lepers, cast out demons; and when grace departed from one of them because of little faith and unbelief, then he could not even cast out demons, as is mentioned in today’s Gospel. This is why the Lord, through them, teaches all of us too to have unwavering faith, and says: if you have faith as a mustard seed, and say to this mountain, move from here to there, it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. Indeed, 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 mighty faith is! And yet people of our own age boast, take pride, in unbelief! Is this an enlightened age? What! We owe every success of learning, in every branch, to our faith, which has poured forth abundant light into human minds—and we ourselves reject faith?! Children rejecting their own Mother, who bore and raised them? How foolish and how ungrateful!

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