Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Congratulations with the feasts of the Resurrection of the Lord and the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles!

In today’s Gospel reading, we heard how our Lord Jesus Christ visited the country of the Gergesenes, or, as Mark and Luke call it, the country of the Gadarenes. There He was met by two men possessed by devils. These demons held the unfortunate men with such strength that in many aspects the unfortunate ones lost the image of men. They wandered in desert places, lived in caves where the dead were buried, conversed with no one, lived like the most wild and fierce animals. And not only these two demon- possessed men suffered, but also all the citizens of the nearby towns, who were forced to avoid those places in which the possessed wandered, so as not to be attacked. One could come to the conclusion that the people of that unfortunate country were obliged to restructure their lives so as to co-exist with these unwanted guests, that is the demons. This type of co-existence of course led not to a pleasant and calm life, but to sin, to a careless attitude towards the Jewish ritual law (they were raising swine, which were considered unclean), to them becoming not God-like (for that is the goal of every person, to reflect God in oneself and to be as much as possible like God Himself), but demon-like.

It is clear that the local people became demon-like because they asked Christ to depart from their coasts. This is unnatural for man, for he is created in the image and likeness of God and has an innate longing to find God and to unite with Him. Once the demons also had such a natural longing to be with God and to serve Him, but in a blink of an eye lost this characteristic when they became proud and turned aside from their Creator. They were changed and it became natural for them to everywhere sow chaos, suffering, death, anger, and all other forms of evil. The citizens of the country of the Gadarenes became so accustomed to co-existing with evil that they could not accept Christ, notwithstanding the fact that He had freed them from the tyranny of the demons.

Today each of us can reflect upon whether we are in any way similar to the Gadarenes. Have our own sins and passions become familiar and perhaps even pleasant? Do we have a strong desire to change our spiritual life for the better, or is it easier for us to change nothing in our comfortable lives? Are we ready to accept Christ within ourselves, to hear His words, and to accept them into our hearts, or is it better for us without His teaching? If we are not at all like the Gadarenes, glory to God, but if we see even the most minute of similarities with them, let us not fall in spirit. Instead, let us approach the holy apostles with fervent prayer that they intercede on our behalf before the throne of the Most High that we begin to hate our sins, strive to blot them out, vigorously search out the Saviour, listen to His Divine voice, and put into action His teaching.

priest Alexis