Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
28When he came to the other side, to the region of the Gadarenes, two men possessed by demons came out of the tombs and met him. They were so fierce that no one could pass that way. 29Suddenly they shouted, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” 30Now a large herd of swine was feeding at some distance from them. 31The demons begged him, “If you cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.” 32And he said to them, “Go!” So they came out and entered the swine, and suddenly, the whole herd stampeded down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the water. 33The swineherds ran off, and, going into the town, they told the whole story about what had happened to the men possessed by demons. 34Then the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their region.
Commentary on Matthew 8:28-34
Matthew’s version of this strange story is quite different from and much shorter than that told in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 5:1-20). It is usual for Matthew to pare down stories to just the essential details, while Mark tends to give a more dramatic presentation. In Matthew’s version, there are two possessed people instead of just one (as in Mark’s Gospel). This is similar to the version of the Bartimaeus story told by Mark (10:46-52) where Matthew (20:29-34) also has two blind men instead of one.
In the previous story about the calming of the storm, we saw that Jesus and his disciples were crossing the lake. They now come to their destination, a place known as the Gadarenes. It got its name from the town of Gadara on the south-east side of the lake.
Here Jesus was met by two people possessed by demons who completely controlled them. Unlike many of the ordinary people, the demons in these two men have an insight into Jesus’ identity although they may not recognise it fully:
What have you to do with us, Son of God?
Jesus usually refers to himself as Son of Man and never as Son of God.
The two men continue shouting:
Have you come here to torment us before the time?
There was a belief that demons would be free to roam the earth until the Judgment Day came. They did this by taking possession of people. This possession was often associated with disease, because disease was the consequence of sin and a sign of being in Satan’s power. That is why when Jesus expels a demon there is often a cure as well. By driving out these evil spirits, Jesus inaugurates the Messianic age which many of the people do not recognise, but which the demons do. Later Jesus will hand over this exorcising power, together with the ability to effect cures, to his disciples. We will see that in the discourse in chapter 10.
The demons then begged Jesus to let them go into a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus consented to this. As soon as they had entered the pigs, the whole herd rushed headlong over a cliff and into the water below. The swineherds rushed off to the nearest town to tell what had happened.
The townspeople immediately came out in search of Jesus and, not surprisingly, begged him to go somewhere else. It might seem rather high-handed of Jesus to destroy a whole herd of pigs in this way. We have to remember, however, that in Jewish eyes these pigs were abominably unclean. There was not a better place to put demons, and it was they who really brought about the destruction of the animals. But understandably, the owners of the pigs found it difficult to see things in the same way.
The purpose of the story, of course, is to focus on Jesus’ power to liberate people from evil influences which were destroying their lives. What these men were suffering could not be compared to the loss of the pigs’ lives and the pigs would have ended up in a cooking pot anyway! We, too, need to ask Jesus to liberate us from any evil influences or addictions which enslave us and prevent us from being the kind of persons he wants us to be.
