Legion this Sunday

Richard Wilbur - Matthew VIII,28 ff.

Rabbi, we Gadarenes
Are not ascetics; we are fond of wealth and possessions.
Love, as You call it, we obviate by means
Of the planned release of aggressions.

We have deep faith in properity.
Soon, it is hoped, we will reach our full potential.
In the light of our gross product, the practice of charity
Is palpably non-essential.

It is true that we go insane;
That for no good reason we are possessed by devils;
That we suffer, despite the amenities which obtain
At all but the lowest levels.

We shall not, however, resign
Our trust in the high-heaped table and the full trough.
If You cannot cure us without destroying our swine,
We had rather You shoved off.

The story of the Gadarene demoniac will be heard in Divine Liturgy this Sunday.

These days, demons are embarrassing. They should be grotesque, but that feeling of revulsion is from a happier time. In a globalized living room culture of publicans, demons are just vermin in the plaster, wallpapered over by posters with slogans. Today, they only go bump in the night and profane the air.

So for some, it is hard to take seriously the Gospel stories of Matthew 8.28-34, Mark 5.1-20 and Luke 8.26-39. One intelligent writer suggests this take: "The point of these variations [i.e., in the text], in my opinion, is that the story is not really expected to be believed literally, not by the authors." This is the usual strategy employed when the Gospel gets too rough for polite play, when it gets too R-rated for the sensitive modern/post-modern/post-post-modern mind.

I take the Gospel straight up, thank you. I do not opt for the chauvinistic scheme of patting the poor ancients on their benighted collective head, saying "There, there, you poor unscientific primitives, we know you didn't know anything about schizophrenia, for that is surely what you meant when you said the man was possessed."

No, I've been around schizophrenics before. I am sure that it is possible for one to act as this man did. But I also know that several diagnoses can appear with similar symptomatic presentations. I also know that medical science, especially psychiatry, is famously poor in its ability to go beyond diagnosis, and to identify substance. Diagnosis has nothing to do with definition. It is all about treatment, and loses its meaning completely when treatment ends or fails (which is more frequent than we'd care to admit).

The Gospel is signally rich in its power to identify, to reveal logos, person and time. I happen to think, also, that the Gospel articulates the true mythos of the Church in the World.

So it is more than possible that the Legion story is true. It is mandatory. It is only optional in the fairy-land of Blackberry-tenured academia.

There are a few lessons from this story, if it is true. One is that demons are nameless (you've read this before), and are labeled "Legion" only as a quantification (much like Bilbo addressing his eleventy-first birthday party guests as a "gross"). The hobbits were not amused, of course, but the demons paid no notice, having grown accustomed to their nameless ways over the eons.

Another lesson is that demons profane and disrupt human nature. The nakedness of the crazed man was not Edenic. There was no happy Rousseau, prancing au naturale in Mother Nature's woods of innocence. The Holy Spirit propels saints into the wilderness for deification and prophecy. The evil spirits compel passion-addicts into the caves and the graves, for debasement and vain repetition (i.e., meaningless speech).

It is interesting, here, that the Blessed Theophylact applies the meaning of the graves to "the tombs of dead and rotting deeds … in brothels and in the chambers of publicans and graft." I wonder if these "chambers of publicans" are festooned with golden parachutes, eh?

This is a dizzy thought, yes? That the graves might be where we are, that the only reason why we don't notice is because the graveyard has become "normal"? We may have, over the eons, grown accustomed to the ways of graves. It is not "natural," to be sure. But we have long since made the big mistake of defining "natural" as what is "normal," and forgetting in the world of sin that inevitability is not, is really not, the same as pre-destination.

It is natural to be Adam, pre-lapsarian, and it is pre-destiny to be a saint.

It is blasphemy to be demonic, but it is probably normal. And when blasphemy becomes blasé, beauty becomes alien, goodness becomes a point of view, and truth a narrative. Passion has become "motivation." Self-esteem, a virtue.

And the swineherders on Wall Street wait, meanwhile, on a nearby hill.

Comments

[handmaid Leah]

Fr. Bless!
With all of the hoop-lah surrounding marriage in California (this time - who knows where the next hot-spot will be), and the culture wars we are told to fight - it is good to be reminded that we are making a big mistake in our thinking. You write: "the big mistake of defining "natural" as what is "normal," and forgetting in the world of sin that inevitability is not, is really not, the same as pre-destination.

It is natural to be Adam, pre-lapsarian, and it is pre-destiny to be a saint."

We appear to continually accept that because something exists in the "natural" world, i.e., homosexuality, or any perversions of our nature, are okay and should even be embraced because they are "natural."
Thank you for the reminder that we are made better than this, though we fell, we have a way back to grace & good.

[Fr. Jonathan]

Thank you Leah. I just want to clarify that "natural" is the condition of creatureliness, and of knowing God as the Absolute Thou, and of being rooted in mystery. The modern caricature of "natural" as "normal" reveals a tragi-comic absurdity: in the relativistic outlook of the postmodern mind, law is defined by central tendencies. Thus, homosexual is "normal" because 10 percent of respondents in certain dubious surveys report that they harbor homosexual notions. And because homosexuality is thusly "normal," it must therefore be "natural."

I am thrilled (a very rare experience these days) that some of Obama's electorate have dished the aims of the libertines, who are well-represented in both Parties.

Blessings for this Advent,

Fr. Jonathan

[James R MacLean]

So for some, it is hard to take seriously the Gospel stories of Matthew 8.28-34, Mark 5.1-20 and Luke 8.26-39. One intelligent writer suggests this take: "The point of these variations [i.e., in the text], in my opinion, is that the story is not really expected to be believed literally, not by the authors." This is the usual strategy employed when the Gospel gets too rough for polite play, when it gets too R-rated for the sensitive modern/post-modern/post-post-modern mind.

Thanks for completely failing to comprehend what I wrote. You're a very dishonest person, for a putative man of the cloth.

[James R MacLean]

*I take the Gospel straight up, thank you.*

Alright then, which version? There's three mutually incompatible ones. Same with the loaves and the fishes.

Pick one. But then the other two are wrong.

*I do not opt for the chauvinistic scheme of patting the poor ancients on their benighted collective head...*

Unfortunately, that's what you're stuck with. I, on the other hand, respect the authors of the bible and assume they are trying to say something profound. And they use the same techniques other writers of that time and place do. So sue me.

*..., saying "There, there, you poor unscientific primitives, we know you didn't know anything about schizophrenia, for that is surely what you meant when you said the man was possessed."*

Don't look at me. I think the word "possessed" is meant literally and accurately. As in, synonym for "occupied." By a legion.

[Fr. Jonathan]

Oh.