The Curing of the Possessed Man (Gerasenes)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“They reached the territory of the Gerasenes on the other side of the lake, and when he disembarked, a man with an unclean spirit at once came out from the tombs towards him. The man lived in the tombs and no one could secure him anymore, even with a chain, because he had often been secured with fetters and chains but had snapped the chains and broken the fetters, and no one had the strength to control him" (Mark 5:1-4).

St. Mark tells us that Our Lord came to the region of the Gerasenes, a country of the Gentiles on the other side of the Lake of Genesareth.

There, as soon as He disembarked, a man possessed by the devil ran up to Him, and throwing himself down in front of Him, he cried out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”

Because Jesus had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.”

Jesus asked him his name “and he replied, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many.’ And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country.”

A great herd of swine was nearby, and so Our Lord performs a miracle (Mark 5:6-11).

We're reminded in this scene that the arrival of the Messiah brings the destruction of Satan's kingdom. This is why the devil demonstrates his resistance so vociferously, and even violently, in many passages of the Gospel.

As in His other miracles, Our Lord stresses His redemptive power when He casts out these devils. Our Lord always introduces Himself into people's lives by freeing them from the evils that oppress them.

We're told in the Acts of the Apostles, “He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38). St. Peter was to say this in his speech before Cornelius and his family, in which he recalls to them that Our Lord had cast out many evil spirits.

On this occasion, the devils speak through this man's lips, and they complain that Our Lord has come to destroy their kingdom on earth. They ask Him to let them remain in that place, and that's why they want to enter into the swine.

Possibly too, they thought it would be a way of getting their revenge on these people and of harming them, as well as being at the same time an opportunity to turn them against Jesus. Our Lord agreed to all that the devils asked Him.

And so, the whole herd rushed down the bank towards the sea, and perished in its waters. The swineherds fled and spread the news in the city and throughout the countryside, and everyone went to see what had happened.

St. Mark makes the point that about two thousand pigs were drowned. That's a lot of pigs. It must have meant a very considerable loss to those Gentiles.

Possibly it can be considered as the ransom demanded of these people in order to free one of their number from the power of the devil.

“They lost some pigs, but they recovered a man.” This possessed man, who was “rebellious and divided against himself, held under the wretched domination of a host of unclean spirits—is he not perhaps a figure of men not uncommon in our own time?

“Perhaps the heavy material price paid for that man's freedom—the complete destruction of a valuable herd of two thousand pigs drowned in the sea of Galilee—can give some faint indication of the high price needed to ransom the whole of contemporary pagan man” (Joseph Orlandis, The Christian in the World).

These are interesting thoughts for us to think about in this season of Lent. We're called to do penance, to make atonement for our sins, to place the reality of souls before us, souls that are far and souls that are near, souls that may be far away from God. God is perhaps depending on our prayer and our penance to bring those souls to Him.

“This cost could be measured in the case of the Gerasenes by the amount of wealth they had lost. Now it is a ransom whose price is the lived poverty of the one who generously seeks to redeem him.

“The real poverty of Christians is perhaps the price God has fixed as the ransom that can liberate the men of our time. It is a price worth paying. A single man is worth immeasurably more than two thousand pigs” (Ibid.).

He's worth more than all the riches and marvels of the created world.

It's interesting occasionally when Our Lord gives us an insight into the value of every soul. Every single soul is worth more than the whole of the material world.

“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?” (Mark 8:36).

As we contemplate the shedding of the blood of Christ on Calvary, it can remind us that we have been redeemed with that precious blood. We've been redeemed at a great price.

As for the devils in this story, when they perceived the exchange of a man for some pigs, they chose the side of the latter, the pigs.

In the eyes of the owner of the herd, temporal harm seemed to carry more weight than the freeing of the possessed man.

And when those people there saw what had happened, they begged Our Lord “to depart from their neighborhood” (Mark 5:17). Our Lord did so immediately.

If they had a little less spiritual blindness, they might have asked the opposite—for Him to stay there, to lift them up onto a new spiritual plane.

There was a man in the Philippines that I heard of. I think he was the quartermaster for the army, and he had to order a lot of provisions; he had a lot of money passing through his hands.

One day he had a supplier from another country who offered him an enormous bribe. It was a six-figure sum; it was to be directly into his bank account. Nobody would know, not even his wife.

But this man said no. He knew this was something wrong. He was a man who took care of his soul. He went to Confession regularly. He attended a monthly recollection, a yearly retreat. He exposed himself to formation.

The foreign supplier said to him—he was a bit peeved because he'd been refused and he'd never been refused before, and this was a large amount of money—“Every man has his price. I will find your price.”

When that man was driving home that evening, he was thinking to himself, “I wonder if it's true that every man has his price. If it's true, I wonder what my price is because I've just turned down such a huge amount of money.”

Every day he had the custom of reading a few lines of the New Testament. He used to do this when he got home each evening. He opened his New Testament and it fell open in the first chapter of St. Peter, Chapter One, Verse 18.

He read, “You know that you've been redeemed from your vain manner of life, not with silver or gold, with perishable things, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

He thought to himself, “Ah, this is my price. I have been redeemed at a great price. and what a fool I would be to let my soul pass for a much lesser price.”

The presence of Our Lord in our life can sometimes involve letting slip a good business opportunity, possibly because it's not completely above board, or because we've not found ourselves able to compete using the same illicit methods as our colleagues, or simply because Our Lord has wanted us to win His heart through our detachment.

One time, a young Chinese-Filipino fellow came to me, a new convert, who was working in a bank, working with trading, derivatives, investments, something along those lines.

There was a possibility of a very lucrative deal, and he was very attracted by this deal. But there was something about the deal that wasn't quite right, that bothered his conscience. He wanted a moral opinion. He came along to ask for a moral opinion.

When I heard what the deal was all about, I had to say, “Well, look, maybe this thing isn't completely above board. Possibly it's not completely below board either, but it's not so transparent or clear.

“If you're trying to lead a life as a good follower of Christ and trying to give example to people in your profession, maybe it's better you don't get involved in this deal.”

I was very aware that it was an awful lot of money that was involved. This new convert, with great clarity, said very quickly, “OK, anyway, I'm not just here to do business. I'm here to go to heaven.”

What a great simple idea that should be there to guide our life. ‘I'm not just here to do this or to do that, to get this deal, or solve this problem. Ultimately, I'm here to get to heaven.’

Our Lord will always ask us, if we're to stay close to Him, for an effective detachment from material things, for real Christian poverty, which clearly points to the primacy of the spiritual over the material. We exchange the lower things for higher things.

We focus on our ultimate end—our own salvation and that of others—the spiritual things over the ephemeral, temporal ends of human well-being.

That's one of the messages in Lent that the contemplation of the Cross has to bring to us. The presence of Christ on the Cross was the summit of all human detachment. He goes out of this world with nothing, just the wood of the Cross.

Earthly things must simply be the means that bring us closer to Christ. Those people begged Jesus to depart from their neighborhood. They never wanted to see Him again.

Yet John Paul II tells us that in Christ we find the meaning and the purpose of our life. They made a big mistake.

We could ask Our Lord that we might never fall into that dreadful aberration of telling Him to depart from our lives, even if declaring ourselves to be Christians in some particular circumstances causes us to forfeit public office or to lose our job, or that leads to some material disadvantage in some way, and that of our family.

Ultimately Christ is going to judge us on our love, on our fidelity, on our virtue, on our holiness. Just the opposite must be our course.

There have been many heroic people in the course of Church history who have forsaken everything for the sake of Christ. St. Thomas More was kicked out of every high office that he was invited into, reduced to a state of poverty, but yet glorying in the prize that was awaiting him.

We could say to Our Lord very often, using the words that the priest says to himself in the Mass just before Communion, “Keep me faithful to your teaching and never let me be parted from you.”

It's far better to be with Christ and have nothing, than to have all the treasures the world contains and to be without Him.

I heard somebody say of another family one time that they have everything, and they have nothing. Often people who are materially wealthy in this world ultimately have nothing.

Try and foster in your soul the desire and the joy of being spiritually wealthy and getting by with what you have.

Gaudium et spes of the Second Vatican Council says, “The Church knows well that God alone, whom it serves, can satisfy the deepest cravings of the human heart, for the world and what it has to offer can never fully content it.”

All the material things in this world don't fully satisfy our desire for happiness and fulfillment.

All the earthly things are simply means to bring us to God. If they do not serve that purpose, then they're worse than useless.

When we see, at the moment, millions of Ukrainians having to flee their homes and their homeland and all the human suffering, we can make an act of faith and say, ‘Lord, there's some great divine message behind all of this thing. Give these people the grace they need to be happy without anything. Help us to help them as much as we can, as we would like to be helped, with Christian charity and justice, but help us also to see that there's some other great providential plan at work here.’

God speaks to us about great spiritual messages through all the human tragedies of this world. Our Lord is of more worth than the most lucrative and important business transaction, more than life itself.

Thomas à Kempis says, “If you drive Jesus away from you and lose Him, to whom will you go? ‘Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life’ (John 6:68). Who will you seek for your friend? Without a friend, you cannot live happily. If Jesus were not your very special friend, you would indeed be sad and desolate.”

You would have lost a great deal in this life and absolutely everything in the next.

Sometimes Our Lord gives us opportunities to store up treasures for ourselves “where dust and moth do not consume, and thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:19).

John Paul II said, “Today there can be added to imprisonment, to incarceration in concentration camps or forced labor camps, and exile from one's native land, other penalties which are less conspicuously striking but more subtle. The sentence is no longer one of death where one sheds one's blood, but sometimes a sort of civil death.

“Not only is there now segregation in a jail or a penal colony, but the permanent restriction of personal freedom by means of repressive laws or social discrimination” (John Paul II, Prayer of petition, August 14, 1983).

Would we be capable, if necessary, of surrendering our honor or of sacrificing our fortune in exchange for remaining with God?

Following Jesus is not compatible with just everything else. We have to make a choice, and give up every single thing that's an obstacle to our being with Him.

For this reason, we must have deeply rooted in our soul a clear disposition of horror for sin, asking Our Lord and His Mother to take away from us anything that might separate us from Him.

Separate from me, Lord, anything that may separate me from you, or anything that decreases your image in my soul.

In this time of Lent, we can ask Our Lord to give us a deeper horror for sin, a greater refinement in our spiritual life, a deeper hatred for venial sin, and for any type of negligence that we may practice with Our God.

Blessed Álvaro del Portillo says, “Mother, free us, your children—each one of us—from any stain, from anything that separates us from God, even though we may have to suffer, even though it might cost us our life” (Álvaro del Portillo, Letter, May 31, 1987).

Of what use would the whole world be to us if we were to lose Our Lord?

The deep spiritual messages of this liturgical period are very important, very beautiful, very rich. There are spiritual treasures there for us to garner for our souls.

Every time Lent comes around, there are new treasures there for us. A very holy woman in Asia told me once, “I look forward to Lent and Advent.”

Those are rather beautiful words to hear, as though this woman had somehow savored the spiritual treasures that were there, the real Mccoy, the things that were really worth having. This time was a time for her soul to fly.

St. John Chrysostom comments, “At that time there were some foolish people there, foolish people whose hearts were in other things, and that can be seen by the way the whole story ends.”

He says that “when they should have fallen down in adoration and wonder at His power, they sent a message to Him, begging Him to depart from their neighborhood” (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on St. Matthew’s Gospel).

Our Lord went to visit them and they were unable to understand who was there, in spite of the wonders that He had worked.

Their spiritual blindness led them nowhere. Not recognizing Our Lord was this people's greatest folly.

Our Lord passes close to us every day of our lives. If our heart is bent on acquiring and accumulating material things, then we won't recognize Him; and there are many ways, some of them very indirect and subtle, of asking Him to leave our neighborhood, to quit our lives.

There may be many people around us—friends, colleagues, neighbors—who are precisely doing just that.

We're told in St. Matthew, “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24).

Our own experience tells us of the dangers that we run in concentrating on earthly goods.

Lord, when I see people around me in need, when I hear human hearts calling out for help, help me to react, to remember your words: “Whenever you did it to one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

Christ is there in each one of those persons and Christ has given us all the material things that we have, down to every last inch or thread, as a gift, to use well and to pass on to other people—the means we have, the physical things we have, things at our disposal.

We know how easily those bad things inside us can lead to symptoms of a disordered desire for more and greater, self-satisfaction, comfort, luxury, giving in to our whims, spending money unnecessarily. It's very easy to forget all the people around us in need.

We see, too, what's happening around us. The Second Vatican Council says, “Many people, especially in economically advanced areas”—not just of countries, but also of cities, of towns—“seem to be dominated by material considerations: almost all of their personal and social lives are permeated with what could only be described as a kind of economic mentality” (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes).

We have to try and fill young people with the desire to serve, to be more conscious of others, to want to do something, to see: What can I do in my life? What can I contribute? How can I have greater ideals to bring up the whole of humanity?

Help us, Lord, to make sure that young people don't fall into the trap of thinking that happiness lies in the latest gadget, or phone, or laptop, or computer, or to succumb entirely to their vivid longings to attain them.

If we try to live detached from the things that we have, we can give them that example. They and we will be able to use everything on earth in the way that accords best with the Will of God, so that our hearts can be for Him only and for the good things of God that never fail.

Detachment makes of life a delightful way of austerity and effectiveness. A Christian who's seriously trying to follow Christ along the pathway to Calvary should frequently ask themselves a series of questions:

Do I remain ever vigilant so as not to fall into a spirit of comfort, into a sort of self-satisfaction, which is in no way compatible with being a disciple of Christ?

Do I make sure that I don't create superfluous needs for myself?

Do the things of this earth take me closer to God or further away from Him?

We can and should always be abstemious in our personal needs, perhaps during these weeks, tightening up a little bit on superfluous expenditure, not giving in to whims, overcoming the tendency to create false needs for ourselves, being generous in almsgiving, and inculcating family discussions and practices along these lines.

We can consider also in our prayer today if we are prepared to cast away from us anything that prevents us from coming close to Christ.

We shouldn't allow to happen to us what happened to the Gerasenes: “All the city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him they begged him to leave their neighborhood” (Mark 5:17).

On the contrary, we can say to Him, in the words of that prayer of St. Benedict used after Holy Communion: “Be thou ever…my heritage of wealth, my very own. Let my heart and soul be set on you forever.”

Lord, to whom would I go without you?

If we stay close to Our Lady, she'll help us to live in this way. She'll point out to us the right road, so that we don't make the big mistakes that the Gerasenes made at that moment in their life.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GD