Because the heat had poured itself upon the earth more than usual, I kept silence for a long while, lest the restraint born of the longing to hear should itself kindle in us the burning of the dog-days' scorching. Now, when the mildness of autumn has tempered the air, we are called back, with the Lord's help, to the Lord's word. When a certain man was bringing to the Lord his son to be cured, one possessed by the fury of a deaf and mute spirit, the evangelist relates that the Lord, contrary to His wonted patience, was so moved that He inveighed against the father's wound before He set Himself to the cure of the son's. 'Answering,' he says, 'one of the crowd said: Master, I have brought my son to Thee, who has a mute spirit; and wheresoever it seizes him, it dashes him down, and he foams and gnashes his teeth and withers away;'
'and I spoke to Thy disciples that they should cast it out, and they could not. And He, answering them, said: O unbelieving generation!' (Mark 9). One of the crowd answers—but what is it that, when one questions, many are struck? What is it that, when one inquires, all are marked as unbelieving? What is it that, at the voice of one, the whole generation is styled proud in its treachery? What is it? It is that this man had not come to God, but had come to a teacher; demanding a cure not from power but from art; ascribing the delay of the cure not to the cause but to the healer; assigning the disciples' inability to the master's inexperience, and by his outcry gratifying the Jewish spite of the Scribes' envy: 'And I spoke to Thy disciples that they should cast it out, and they could not.'
This is to say that he is a devil who would not believe in Christ, and that he is a demon who can hold in scorn the power of even the least of Christ's name. The disciples were driving demons out of possessed bodies not in their own name, but in the name of Christ. Therefore, when the demon did not yield to the disciples' command, this man was dragging it down to a weakness in the name of Christ, not to a fault in the disciples. Seeing, then, that the throngs of the Jews standing about had such notions, the Lord thus burns into the sons the treachery of their fathers, and thus strikes at the venomous seeds in the parents: 'O unbelieving generation!' 'Coming,' he says, 'the Lord to His disciples, saw around them a great crowd, and Scribes disputing with them; and immediately all the people, seeing Jesus, were amazed and were terrified.'
They feared, doubtless, lest what they had cast up in insult against the disciples they should lose at the master's coming; and lest, once so great a demon was put to flight, that very thing which had been an occasion of confusion should become for the disciples a cause of glory. Hence it is that the Lord, though one questioned Him on behalf of all, answered: 'O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you?' By whose unbelief not even one demon is put to flight from a captive body. 'How long shall I be with you? And shall I not send to the nations?'—where, at the voice of a single disciple of Mine, temples fall, images flee, altars are consumed, idols topple, sacred groves are hewn down, and the whole power of demons, groaning and trembling and wailing, is driven from its ancient and long-held seats:
the shrines are changed into Churches, the altars are turned into holy altars, the sacrificial victims of the dead beasts are transferred into a living victim of the heart; auguries, divinations, dreams are set at the sole beck of God, within God's judgment alone. 'How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?' Patience bears not out of fear, not out of necessity, but out of mercy; it bears out of expectation, not out of dread. He bears, He carries, He waits, who wills that the impious man return, not perish. 'Bring him to Me'—as though, set far off, He could not cure him; nay, bring yourselves as the cause of your unbelief, the title of your infidelity, the proof of your treachery.
'Bring him,' that you who would not believe even God teaching, may at least believe though a demon contend against you, and may perceive that you are baser than the very devil, when you see him confess and forthwith tremble at the presence of the One who knows him. 'And they brought him; and when he had seen Him, immediately the spirit troubled him, and, dashed to the earth, he rolled about foaming.' The man was rolling, but the devil was being tortured; the cure vexed the possessed one, but the majesty of the Judge convicted the possessor; the captive was being restrained, but the enemy was being punished; the devil's penalty appeared in the torment of the human body. There is need, brethren, there is need of the light of God, lest in the work of God human eyes be deceived. 'And He asked his father: How long is it since this befell him? And he said: From infancy.'
The Author of time inquires after the time of the affliction; the Physician of the affliction inquires after its time—not as one ignorant, but as one who, knowing, would disclose it to the ignorant. And so by such a question He opens up the time, lays bare the age, calls up the infancy again, that the cause of so great an evil may not touch the child but the parent; for the pledge given him by God, he handed over to the favor of the devil, to the honor of demons, as the Scripture says: 'And they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons' (Ps. 105). What crime had infancy committed, that it should make room in itself for the devil? What guilt? Yet the little ones are filled with the demon when they are offered by their parents to the devil and are led to the demons' charge. And so, in the end, he is loosed by the father's faith, whom the father's faithlessness had bound. It is the father's voice:
'If Thou canst do anything, help us, having pity on us.' That is: help us, have mercy on us, whose guilt weighs down the innocent, to whose punishment the child's peril thus overflows. And rightly the Lord seeks faith from the parents, saying: 'If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believes.' And the father: 'I believe, Lord; help my unbelief.' The father believes; and, as we have said, he is set free by the father's faith who had been condemned by the father's faithlessness. For to whom the father's faith profited, how could the father's treachery not have harmed him? But how he was healed, and why the disciples, who had cast out many demons, were unable to put this one to flight, we shall, with the Lord's help, set forth in the sermon to follow.