The Gerasene Demoniac

Hello! and happy first day of the week and of the month of February to all of us, GUYS.  For today's "food for the soul":

THE GOOD NEWS (01 February 2016)

"They arrived on the other side of the lake in the region of the Gerasenes.  No sooner did JESUS leave the boat than HE was met by a man with evil spirits who had come from the tombs.  He lived among the tombs and no one could restrain him, even with a chain.  He had often been bound with fetters and chains but he would pull the chains apart and smash the fetters, and no one had the strength to control him.  Night and day he stayed among the tombs on the hillsides, and was continually screaming and beating himself with stones.

When he saw JESUS from afar, he ran and fell from his feet and cried with a loud voice, 'What do you want with me, JESUS, son of the Most High GOD?  For GOD's sake I beg you, do not torment me.'  He said this because JESUS had commanded, 'Come out of the man, evil spirit.'  And when JESUS asked him, 'What is your name? he replied, 'Legion is my name, for we are many.'  And all of them kept begging JESUS not to send them out of that region. 

Now, a great herd of pigs was feeding on the hillside, and the evil spirits begged him, 'Send us to the pigs and let us go into them.'  So JESUS let them go.  The evil spirits came out of the man and went into the pigs, and immediately the herd rushed down the cliff and all were drowned in the lake.  The herdsmen fled and reported this in the town and in the countryside, so all the people came to see what had happened.

They came to JESUS and saw the man freed of the evil spirits sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the same man who had been possessed by the legion.  They were afraid.  And when those who had seen it told what had happened to the man and to the pigs, the people begged JESUS to leave their neighborhood.

When JESUS was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed begged to stay with HIM.  JESUS would not let him and said, 'Go home to your people and tell them how much the LORD has done for you and how HE has had mercy on you.'  So he went throughout the country of Decapolis telling everyone how much JESUS had done for him.  And all the people were astonished. - Mark 5:1-20 

(JESUS overcame the raging sea and disembarking on the pagan shore of the lake HE confronts the demon.  The text says three  times that the possessed lived among the tombs, and mentions also three times the chains with which people had in vain tried to bind him.  For a Jew to repeat something three times is to use the superlative: it is to say that the possessed has partnership with death and with impurity to which it is attached; but no one, absolutely no one is able to master him.  Finally, the possessed, like the servants of idols slashed himself with stones till blood flowed.  This adversary, however, bows low recognizing the superiority of JESUS, Son of GOD the Most High, who forces him to reveal his name.  Here again the name is a symbol: legion that means that this man is possessed by a regiment of demons.  JESUS will free this possessed man: the demon, author of every "impurity" is sent to his own kingdom.  Pigs are in fact, in Jewish tradition, a type of impure animal, and the sea into which they cast themselves is the symbol of the empire of evil.

The herds rushed down.  The actual text of Mark says, "two thousand pigs rushed."  This is an incredible number, for such large herds of pigs were never seen.  In Hebrew, the word for herds is only distinguished from the word for 2,000 by an accent mark.  Probably a mistake was made when Mark's Gospel was written in Greek.

JESUS would not let him.  It is HE who chooses those who will be with HIM.  That does not mean that the others, all those who met JESUS and recognized HIM as Son of GOD, have nothing to do: they will witness in the midst of those they know how HE had compassion on them.  In this way JESUS reminds us of the diversity of vocations.)