The Man Possessed by Legion

We see this man in the Gospel reading today, this man who was possessed by Legion and lived among the tombs and on the hillsides, screaming out and gnashing himself all day and night. Isn’t it interesting that, of all the people, he is the first one that the Lord sends out on a mission to go and preach the Gospel?

…Now this can give us great hope in one form or another. If the world tends to reject us because of the way we are living our lives (as long as we are not doing something that is utterly foolish) then if it is because of faith that we do what we do, it is pleasing to God and it is fully acceptable in the sight of God. We do not need to be doing great things; we do not need to be extraordinary…

At the same time, what we can also do is look back at our own lives and we can see the sinfulness of our lives. And we can wonder, as so often we do, whether God could even have mercy on such a rotten sinner as ourselves...“Why would God ever want such a horrible person like me to be doing anything good for Him? Why would He want it?” Precisely because we are such horrible sinners. Can any of us suggest that we are possessed by hundreds of demons, living among the tombs and gnashing ourselves day and night? Yet this is the man that God sent to preach the Gospel to the pagans. And it is precisely because they all knew who he was. They saw him in his possessed form. They knew that he could not be bound and chained even with the strongest chains and that nothing could hold this man down. Now that he had been healed, once again, nothing could hold him down – not physically anymore, but spiritually; he was going to preach the Gospel no matter what it cost...

So if we look at our own sinfulness and we wonder what God would want with somebody like us, it is to live and to preach the Gospel precisely because if other people knew what a horrible life we have lived, then how can they reject the message of the Lord when they see that we are trying now to live a life of faith, that we have been healed by Jesus Christ? If, on the other hand, we have lived a holy life and by faith God has drawn us aside and made us a little bit odd according to the ways of the world and different in the eyes of those around us, praise God! That means the world is not worthy of you, but God has found you worthy; and it is a purification as He prepares you for the ultimate resurrection and for the glory of Heaven.

Regardless of our situation, what we need to do is stop fighting with God and accept the fact that He has chosen us. He has chosen to heal us and now He is simply asking us to do His Will. We need to ask Him what His Will is for us and we need to seek to do it. When we see the examples that we hear of in the readings today, we realize that, one way or the other, not only are we no different from these people on one level, but we cannot even compare with them on either end of the spectrum. And so if that is the case, and God could choose these people, He can choose us as well. And He has. So it is time that we stop questioning God and it is time that we stop fighting with Him, and instead that we accept His choice, His call, and that we respond with our whole heart and seek to do His Will and to live and to preach the Gospel to others.
--Fr. Robert Altier