The Demoniac
Jesus spent much of his public ministry moving from community to community teaching, healing the sick, and curing those who were possessed. These miracles were so common that the Gospel writers rarely found it necessary to dive into the details of these moments. However, there are always specific stories in the Gospels of each of these cases that best exemplify the power of Christ, such as the Sermon on the Mount to represent his teachings or the healing of the paralytic at Bethesda to represent his healings. Regarding the exorcism of demons, though, the best example is what we read about in today’s Gospel - the Gerasene demoniac. We hear about a truly frightening story that reveals the experiences of Christ’s public ministry, as well as what we can expect when we share the message of Christ to the world.
There are three major details to this Gospel story. The first detail is the demoniac himself. His possessed soul was so overcome with demonic power that he became a physical threat to his community, forcing them to chain him up and keep him in a tomb. The presence of Christ agitated the demons so violently that he broke away from the chains and rushed towards Christ and his disciples. When Christ asked the demoniac his name, the demons replied, “Legion…there are many of us.” The presence of Christ and the manifestation of pure holiness agitates the broken, the evil, and the distorted. In the presence of perfection, imperfection recognizes that its time is almost up. We know that Satan will unleash his greatest terror just before Christ’s second coming because the second coming will be Christ in his full glory. This man, who suffered from multiple demons, suffered even more greatly just as Christ was about to expel these evil spirits from him. We can expect the same in our lives as Christians; the deeper we fall into the arms of Christ, the more that evil within our lives will agitate and harm us. This is ultimately a purging; to rid ourselves of sin and the presence of evil is our only hope of remaining safe. This applies to the second detail of the story, when Christ drove the demons out of the man and into the herd of swine. The focus of this detail is not the alleviation of the demons’ victim, but the bystanders who witnessed with fear the power of Christ. It was too much for them, and it affected their livelihood; they begged Christ to leave their region. For those who want to be followers of Christ but want to give concessions to the world so that their faith journey is easier, they will crumble when the hardship of being a disciple of Christ affects their livelihood. Christianity is all or nothing; we are either begging Christ to take control of our lives or we are begging him to leave us alone because to be his follower causes too much hardship.
The hardship of Christianity is the story of our faith. Christ did not become human to live an easy or a perfect life; he came to suffer on our behalf because we could not bear the punishment for our own sins. In the third detail of this Gospel story, the grateful man who is freed from his demons implores Christ to allow him to be a disciple. But a disciple is a student; Christ’s response is that the man need not learn the ways of Christ, but to share the ways of Christ to others, as if he had already learned it by not only suffering from the demons, but also by being restored to spiritual wholeness by Christ. If you are suffering, remember that Christ alone can restore you to wholeness. It may be in this life or the next, but this is essentially our time to learn as his disciples. Suffering is discipleship. Soon, he will call us to be evangelists, sharers of his message. Suffering now is merely an opportunity for us to learn what God has in store for us.
Today's Readings: