By St. Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev)
Today at the Liturgy, the Holy Church offered us for instruction the Gospel story of the healing of the demoniac of the Gadarenes by the Lord. (Luke 8:26-37) Every Gospel story contains within itself a source of great comfort for us, weak, discouraged people, burdened by many sins and sorrows. We can say even more. Every Gospel word is good, comforting news for our hearts. How many examples there are in the Orthodox Church, from apostolic times to our days, when people were transformed, influenced by the words of the Gospel, and some of them became some of the greatest luminaries of the world, as was the case with the Venerable Anthony the Great, Ephraim the Syrian, with the Venerable Martyr Eudokia and many other saints of God.
With awareness of the saving significance of the Gospel for us, let us turn our attention, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, to those words from today’s Gospel reading, where the demons ask Jesus Christ to allow them to enter the herd of pigs. The Lord allowed them, the entire herd of pigs perished, and the inhabitants of the Gadarene country suffered great material loss.
What saving lesson, beloved, can we draw from this for ourselves? First of all, these words from the Gospel suggest to us not to be afraid of demonic power, because, as we see, without permission from the Lord, demons cannot touch not only people, but even animals. Therefore, we will not be afraid of demons when they attack us and cause us all kinds of misfortunes, directly or through evil people. Thus, fearlessly, holy people, for example, the Venerable Anthony the Great, John of Rila and Seraphim of Sarov, treated the demons and their insidious attacks. The demons appeared to them openly, beat them almost to death, inflicting terrible wounds on them. But they always remembered the words of Christ: This kind (i.e., the demonic) does not go out except by prayer and fasting. (Matt. 17:21) Therefore, the demonic plots were not terrible for them, and through constant prayer and abstinence they emerged victorious from the difficult struggle with the demons.
Indeed, the demons do not attack us so openly and fiercely. St. Seraphim says that even their appearance alone could prove deadly to us. Therefore, they arm themselves against us primarily internally, through the passions, namely: through pride, vanity, malice, condemnation, envy, avarice, intemperance, fornication, sorrow and despondency. Here the demons do us so much harm that most people cannot withstand their attacks and perish forever. We, like the saints, must fight these demonic attacks through constant prayer and fasting and remember that demons will not dare to touch us without God’s permission, that they are strong only because of our weakness, or rather because of our unwillingness to fight them. The Holy Fathers teach that demons are most afraid of three things: the Body and Blood of Christ, the Epiphany water and the sign of the cross. Therefore, we will receive communion more often, but we will receive communion worthily, i.e. with true repentance, we will drink Epiphany water more often and sprinkle ourselves with it, and finally, we will always pray with a broken heart and surround ourselves with the sign of the cross. And then we will not be afraid of demons, but the demons will be afraid of us, because, being in a gracious union with Christ, we will have within ourselves a source of indestructible strength and divine joy.
In the mentioned Gospel words there is, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, another saving teaching for us. If without God’s will the demons could not enter the swine and destroy them, then it is clear that when they cause misfortunes to people, they have God’s consent for this. The Lord, for the good purposes of His divine providence, allows all kinds of temptations and attacks to occur in our lives, either directly from demons or through evil people. God even allowed His Only Begotten Son to experience such an attack during His temptation by the devil in the wilderness, and also when the scribes and Pharisees, armed against Him with the devil’s malice, wanted to stone Him to death, and finally crucified Him. However, all these attacks ended with the resurrection of Christ – with a complete defeat for the devil.
With the same good purpose, the Lord allowed and still allows attacks from the devil in the lives of His true disciples: the apostles, the martyrs, and all the saints. The more evil they suffered from the devil, the more grace they received from God and were crowned with unfading glory.
The Lord allows the devil to attack us, sinful people, through all sorts of sorrows and misfortunes, but again with the good purpose – to cleanse us from sins and to send us His indescribable mercy while still on earth, and after the grave to honor us with His Heavenly Kingdom. Therefore, we will not consider ourselves abandoned by God when He sends us sorrows. On the contrary, we will consider ourselves unhappy if the Lord leaves us without punishment, remembering the words of God: whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. (Prov. 3:12)
Such an attitude, by the way, towards our personal misfortunes will appear in us only when we begin to imitate the saints in enduring all sorts of calamities, which were so many in their lives. Usually we think that the culprits of all our troubles are other people. Thanks to such an attitude towards our sorrows, we gain enemies, sorrows increase even more and our life turns into constant torment. The saints of God did not act like this. They blamed not people for their sorrows, but demons. More precisely, they did not blame even the demons, in all their attacks, but only themselves and believed that everything sorrowful was sent to them by God because of their own sins. Therefore, they always prayed, always broke down and cried. Because of their self-condemnation, because of their humility, the Lord consoled them with His wonderful grace and glorified them with His glory.
Let us also act in this way in all our calamities, thinking that the cause of them is our own sins. Then we will receive grace and powerful intercession from God.
These are the instructive lessons contained in the Gospel words we have considered. Remembering these words, my beloved children in Christ, we will not be afraid of the demonic power, which diligently strives through sorrows to tear us away from God and destroy us forever. Let us only always abide in prayer, fasting and repentance and make use of all the gracious means that the Holy Church offers us for our salvation. Let us always remember that all misfortunes happen to us by the will of God for our good. Let us never blame our neighbors for them, but blame and condemn only ourselves, and then the words of Christ will come true for us: he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Matt. 23:12) Because of our humility, the Lord will raise us to joyful communion with Himself, will free us from demonic power even in earthly life, and also after death, at the toll booths in the air, and will make us participants in His Kingdom with all its indescribable bliss. May the Lord grant each of us to attain it, through the prayers of the Mother of God and all the saints. Amen.
Source: The sermon was pronounced in the Russian embassy church “St. Nicholas” in Sofia (Bulgaria), 1931.
