In this Gospel, God clearly shows us the reason for our infirmities and sufferings, which is our non-belief or weak faith. When God told the boy’s father: “If you can believe? Everything is possible for him who believes! “ He shouted with tears and said:” I believe Lord, Help my non-belief!” He humbled, accepted his weakness and weak faith and in repentance he confessed, that is why God gave him the strength to believe and healed his son.

If we pay a little more attention to Jesus’ answer, we will notice that the cure and therapy prescribed by our Lord, is spiritual: the faith in God, the prayer and the fasting. This is because the core and essence of our life is spiritual. The man is a psychophysical being, created from the dust of the ground (substance) in the image and likeness of God, to be in eternal union with his God and Creator. But after the transgression, the sin entered the world and disease, suffering, sorrow, misfortune followed … Yet, the merciful God has not given up completely of His creation and gave us a way of repentance and salvation, so now the man is always in a position between the two poles, life and death, good and evil, God and mammon (the devil). When man will forget God, (non belief) then the sin and disease will enter into him. When man will get closer to God, then he heals and thrives. If our spirit is healthy than our body will be healthy.

According to God Jesus Christ, the remedy and therapy for each weakness and disease is the prayer and fasting which, unfortunately, we all have forgotten. We have forgotten these two main things in the spiritual life, therefore the devil has very easy access to us.

From today’s Gospel, we can understand how our mutual relationships are, how they go from one extreme to another extreme and yet we are powerless to control them.

Why?

St. April Paul calls: Brothers … Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Eph. 6.12 to 13). This means our battle is spiritual.

The devil is clever and a spirit in nature and acts through our ideas and thoughts.  If we do not have the prayer, then he can easily come into us and manipulate with our thoughts. If we believe him, we have already created a problem. The devil is the father of lies and a man murderer and he wants us to argue, to separate, execute, destroy and push us into hell. If we are foolish and stupid and begin to accept his thoughts and start open dialogue with them, instead of praying to God to enlighten our minds and dismiss them, then we can easily believe in his thoughts and identify them as true, which in turn darken our minds and create the sin as God forbids. If we don’t wake up on time, then we will end up with unwanted things and big consequences.

The prayer is a conversation and a communion with the living God. Practicing the prayer we have our mind and heart to God and our concentration to God, through love.  The communion with Him gives us His grace, which is a fire for demons, so they do not have access to us, which then they twitch, paralyze and run away from us. God reveals “This kind of demon, cannot be driven out but by a prayer and fasting.”

Prayer should always be supported by fasting. Fasting does not only mean avoiding a certain kind of food, but also abstinence from everything that is superfluous and unnecessary. By suppressing our thoughts, our desires and passions, we have control over ourselves and we tie devil’s feet and hands, not allowing him to have influence on us. The Holy Fathers say fasting and prayer are the two wings of our soul to the heavenly kingdom. Therefore, let us love fasting and prayer with the whole soul and strength, and put them into practice and accept with our life, so to call victory over sin and worship the Holy Resurrection. Amen.