That the Lord had come across the strait into the region of the Gerasenes, and that, as he went out of the boat, straightway there met him a man from the tombs having an unclean spirit, bound with chains and fetters, we have learned in today's Gospel reading (Mark 5:3); a man who had his dwelling in the tombs. The author of death broods over the mansions of death, and, greedy for human slaughter, those whom by his cruelty he cannot kill, he desires savagely to bury alive. He rages, he raves, that grasping exactor of our destruction, to whom it is a punishment that a man is born; that a man dies too slowly, is a torment to him: he strives to consign this man's very brief life to the horrid sepulchres;
the confounded enemy, perverse toward both, thrusts the living into sepulchres, sets food before the dead, pours out honey, that he may both slay the living and disquiet the dead. The man was held bound with chains and fetters: bound by another's crime, and by the guilt of its inhabitant the innocent dwelling was tormented. The devil's fault redounded to the man's punishment, and by the miseries of the prey the enclosed plunderer was fattened; and an execrable envy exposes not the doer, but the sufferer. Desiring to succor this disease, the Lord crosses the sea: that is, by the vessel of our body he passes over to the bounds of the fluctuating world, he arrives at the shores of our salvation filled with shipwrecks, and the region drenched in the darkness of blind ignorance
he floods with the splendor of his own light, about to detect the snares of the crafty enemy, and about to put to flight, by his royal power, the very prince of spiritual wickedness with his legions; that at last he might render free those whom the hostile power had long held captive. 'Seeing Jesus from afar,' it says, 'he ran and worshipped him, and crying with a loud voice, said: What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the most high God? I adjure you by God, that you torment me not.' At the beck of Christ the order of punishments was reversed; before, with the devil playing the robber, the innocent man was vexed; now the man runs, but the devil runs afoul; the flesh is bowed down, but the unclean spirit lies prostrate and is cast down. 'He ran and worshipped him' (Mark 5:6).
What is this, O devil? You who by a threefold temptation provoked him to a fall, whom you cunningly sought to have worship you for a kingdom—now, trembling and pitiable, do you fall down and worship? Behold, he who promised all the honors of kingship and glory is found dwelling among the foul corruption of cadavers in the tombs. Thus, thus does this one deceive when he promises, that he may drag down with him to hell, when the false promiser mocks those who consult him from things above. 'What have I to do with you, Son of the most high God?' For even now he worships here as a flatterer, not as one devout and obedient, desiring to escape the punishment, dreading to lose the prey. The wretch believes that he can assail by flattery him whom he could not conquer by temptation, whom he could not bend by gifts:
but he was wont to loose the bound, to recall the captives, and to restore to himself the bounds that were not acquired but created by himself: to strike the enemy down by free power, and not to seek out through deceitful faction the possessor who is the enemy of his own people. And crying with a loud voice, he says: 'What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the most high God? I adjure you by God, that you torment me not.' What does human frailty do, what does it suffer, subjected to such and so great miseries? Behold, the devil, with the patron's voice of the man, cries out that he is about to attack the man: and all the members of the man wage war against their own enemy unto their own ruin. 'What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the most high God?' What have I to do with you? What the condemned has with the judge, what the deserter with the king, what the invader with the lord. 'What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the most high God?'
If you acknowledge the Son, surely you are not ignorant of the Heir: if you have known the Heir, why do you presume to seize the inheritance? 'I adjure you by God, that you torment me not.' The prevaricator fears, and dissembles: he confesses the Son, but strives by solid art that God be not understood; he adjures God by God, that he may make him seem to be another, that he may deceive and beguile the hearing of the bystanders. Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?' He asks: he is not ignorant, but he fulfills the office of judge, he keeps the order of an examiner: he asks the name, that he may inquire concerning its condition, judge concerning the guilt, condemn concerning the crime, and by the sentence given demonstrate himself to be God. 'Legion,' he answered, 'for we are many.' Christ's questioning thus dispels our ignorance;
it opens to us what lay hidden—a legion against one. Manifest is the sloth of a soldier, if he deserts the battle-line, if he draws back his step, if he dreads to join combat; there he foresees the one captive to be stronger than a numerous foe. At the presence of the King, what are these, who, to seize one man—and not even a recruit—came together with the whole array of their cohort? Where would they be if they had already seen there the banner of the cross, if they had seen the standards of Christ? Come, O Christian, advance secure: so great and so many a band, which thus fears the unarmed, will flee far off, if it should see, if it should perceive, if it should recognize you armed. 'The spirits besought him, saying, send us into the swine.' See where Satan desires to place his seat. From the sepulchres into the swine.
Once infected with rottenness, he seeks out foul and unclean dwellings; he delights in filth and mire, he who indeed is ever fed by the stench of crimes and the squalor of vices. But so hellish and horrid is his odor, that not even the nature of swine could suffice to endure him: for at last they preferred to be plunged in the sea and to perish in the waves, rather than to bear his uncleanness and to tolerate his rottenness. But what can the demons presume, who do not even prevail to touch the swine, unless the divine power should permit them? Wretched is he who, having forsaken the judge, has vainly sought the favor of the executioner; who can neither vex nor spare, neither diminish torments nor add to them, but who, himself a condemned scourge, does all according to the right and will of the one who judges.