Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

In today’s Gospel, passage Jesus travels to the land of the Gerasenes, and encounters a man who has been possessed by evil spirits. This man howls and screams every day and gashes himself with rocks, etc. His neighbors have tried to restrain him, but even chains cannot hold him. He just breaks free. So it is marvelous at the end of the passage when Jesus has freed the man from the evil spirits, and the neighbors find the man sitting calmly with Jesus and in his right mind. It is a beautiful passage about Jesus’ power to heal us and set us free.

However, one thing has always bothered me about this episode: Jesus allows the evil spirits to move into the nearby herd of pigs, who then rush into the sea and drown. I like animals, so I wonder why Jesus allows the evil spirits to destroy the pigs. And Jesus, as God incarnate, is the creator of this herd of pigs. As Wisdom 11:24 assures us, God loves all he has created and does not want its destruction. So why does Jesus allow the evil spirits to destroy the pigs?

I think the answer to this question lies in what we human beings can learn from the example of the pigs. When the pigs sense the presence of evil, they immediately flee from it, even to their own destruction. They want nothing to do with it. How different that is from us! We human beings are so often enticed and drawn toward evil. That is exactly what temptation to sin is: we know something is wrong, that it is evil, yet we are drawn towards it. We want it, whatever it is, and try to find a way to justify obtaining or doing it. That is where the conflict in temptation comes from, our attempt to justify to ourselves the choice of something we somehow know to be wrong and evil. We should learn from the pigs to flee from evil every time we sense it.

Reflection by Fr. Aquinas Keusenkothen, OSB