In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

Demons are fallen angels from heaven, led by the demon or devil, or Satan, who was  the light bringer, Lucifer, whom God loved the most and had trust in him. However, the devil, losing his mind and wanting to be bigger than God, became proud and thus from the bright angel he became a black devil.  Because pride never recognizes sin, devil always involves others to pull them down with him.  Because of pride jealousy, hatred and all those bad, negative things come out; the devil began to tell lies to the other angels, to pull them down along with him. A fight occurred in heaven, whereby Archangel Michael stood in front of everybody and called those who had not fallen from God, the others God drove from the kingdom of heaven into the world. Thus, they govern or rule in this world, as we can all see.  They have nothing to do with the kingdom of heaven, but are here to lie to us. But those lies, we should see as our consolidation, because we were fallen from the grace of God and therefore we should do as St. Peter did. He denied God three times and then three times he confessed Christ, so we should try to gain our salvation.

As you see, just like the evil demons, these two men who were normal like others, allowed a legion of demons to enter in them, and they allowed this because for them it was a sweeter glory than the glory of God.  Instead of hope in God they had hope in themselves and they left God. So they were left unprotected by the grace of God, because of their pride and in their own time, unknown to us, they were ruled by demons.  Nowadays, this actually happens to every one of us, the demons come into us and rule us.  Demons rule over us to the extent of our sins. We may see so-called happy people on earth, but we should know that all those who do sin are slaves to sin or slaves to the devil and demons, and they are not happy people, but sad no matter how much fame and wealth they gain on earth.

What do demons want to do?   Demons want to break up the personal relationship between people, or the social life in us, because man is created as a social being. Personal relationship means a personal union with one another in the Church of God, in one body, so it is very wrong when the word person we rather use the word. Individual is an appropriate term for those who are ruled by the devil, as these two men, from the community of this society; because they could not live with them they created permanent conflict. So when we create conflict with people, although we think that the conflict is created by others, that is, when we can not live with them because of our pride, then we should know that the demon possess us and cold darkness is in us, because we are proud, everyone else annoys us and everyone else is our enemy, as it is called by the philosophers today – that we see our hell in others. Or the one saying from Roman times, which says we’re wolves to one another.

However, as I said, this is because we allow pride and vanity to rule in us, and it is the presence of the devil and the demons in us, and thus we cannot establish a healthy relationship with anyone. However, God is great and there is no power on earth, even as it says in Gospel, the gates of hell cannot break the Church and cannot break the power of God. The doors of hell are considered the most powerful horde of devil, which means that the moment we turn to God with repentance, the demons get out of us, we get released from the passions and their captivity. The demons know that God is God and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He has power to cast them out and only by His permission they go where God will allow them.

So these demons, who were legion, when they saw Jesus Christ, they got frightened of Him and confessed by saying: “What do you want with us, Son of God?” They had fear of Christ so they asked Jesus if they couldn’t get into the people to send them into the herd of pigs. However, as you can see, the pigs could not withstand their presence and hurled themselves, which means that the man who is the image of God is a great being, a great power and has a high value. But we are ruled by our passions and sins and we notice that the man is not worth anything nowadays. Man is very weak, I often say, even from a cigarette or any other passion bows on his knees as a slave and ask for mercy from that passion, just to please that passion in him.  This means that man humiliates himself.

You see that the demons do not know everything and can not do everything, and we often are afraid to declare war, because they are supposedly very strong, but as you can see, they asked to move into the pigs, when the pigs hurled among themselves they remained naked and empty, and as it is said in the Gospel, they walked through dry places to seek out new victims to inhabit. And St. Apostle Paul, the apostle that we read today said that the heart is believed to excuse, and with the mouth confess to salvation, which means that we should believe in Christ and this will justify to us that Christ is God. But it will not save us; only our mouth can save us, by confessing Jesus Christ. But, these fools recognized the power of God, and instead of being glad that there was salvation in their home, began to beg Christ to leave their territory, because He destroyed their herd of pigs. The swine were sweeter glory than the glory of man, that those two brothers (sons of someone or relatives of someone) were freed from the demons that were tortured for many years and from which they themselves have had problems with.

But as you see, the demonic darkness, its confinement of self-indulgence or desire for overeating, drinking, fornication, forced them to serve more to those passions instead of God, because where God is those passions disappear. Therefore we cannot serve two masters, either God or the demon. We will try to purify our heart from the passions and acquaint and preserve the grace within our it, transforming it into God’s home, His city or we will make it the city of immorality, which the poorest deed will take place.

Therefore, it is necessary not only to believe that Jesus Christ is God, but with our life, mouth and deeds, everywhere and always to preach and to confess Christ and live as Christ. This will open our mouth and heart, and our heart will become His home and He will come to live in it. This was the teaching of today’s Gospel. Who has ears, let him hear. Amen!