There is a very interesting phrase in today’s Gospel
reading: No one was able to pass by that way.
With this phrase, we remember the ferocity of the demons and their
hatred of the human race, but through the cure of the Gadarene demoniacs, we
learn about the might of the Lord Jesus, our God. We learn that Satan is not
equal to God, but is only a created being, and he is humbled in this event of
the Gadarene demoniacs, and finally he is destroyed in the suffering, death and
resurrection of the our Lord.
With this phrase, we also remember that our struggle is not
against “flesh and blood,” but against spirits, which seek to deal us the
greatest injury—the death of our souls.
The two demoniac men in the Gospel according to St. Matthew can
represent for us the most ferocious passions of our souls: anger and lust—the
enemies, who are so fierce that only our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficiently
strong to overpower them. These passions
are natural energies in us, which the enemy controls on account of sin. Nevertheless, when we decide to leave sin,
and we turn to God with our whole heart, the Holy Spirit gives us the power to
defend against these attacks and to change our lives. The Holy Spirit acts through prayer. Prayer is not a weapon, it is not a tool of
our struggle; it is the struggle itself, in which we defend against passions
and the devil by the Name of our God, strengthened by the Word of God. Even the most ferocious demons and passions
must capitulate before the power of God, Whom we invoke.
We can use the story of Saint Theodore the Varangian as a
parable. When Volodymyr, the prince of Old Novhorod, came to take the throne of
Kyiv, he decided to assert his authority by a series of human sacrifices. Specifically, he chose Christians to
sacrifice, because Christians were threats to his authority on account of the
fact that they did not worship the gods, from whom the authority of the prince
was derived. Therefore, Volodymyr chose the son of Theodore the Varangian,
John, to be a sacrifice to the gods. But, St. Theodore refused to hand over his
son. He said, “I will not permit that my son be sacrificed to demons.”
Therefore, Volodymyr and his boyars attacked the house of St. Theodore, and St.
Theodore, armed with a sword, stood in the narrow doorway of his house, and
held them off for a long time with fierce fighting. Finally, Volodymyr and the
boyars had to cut the supports of the house, so that Theodore and his son John
fell from the doorway onto the spears of Volodymyr’s soldiers. Thus, the holy
martyrs died and ascended to heaven.
The story of the Holy Martyrs Theodore and his son John
shows us that we cannot compromise with the passions, but we have to fight them
with the sword of the Word of God to the death if necessary. Our example is the Lord’s temptation in the
desert. In temptations, we must oppose
the devil by the authority of the Holy Spirit in order to destroy the false
authority of Satan. Our first prayer should be for the infusion of the Holy
Spirit, just as the Holy Gospel says: “Which of you, fathers, when your son
asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or when he asks for a fish, instead of a
fish, will give him a serpent? Or when he asks for an egg, will give him a
scorpion? If you, who are evil, know how to give your children good things, how
much more will the heavenly Father give the HOLY SPIRIT to those who ask Him!” The
purpose of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to conform us to Christ, Who is the
perfection of human nature. Therefore, we should pray for this with great
desire. Two prayers are very offensive to God: the prayer that is without
desire, and the prayer that is without trust. We have to pray with great desire
and great confidence for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our lives, not
only for us, but for the building up of the Holy Church.
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