The Demoniacs who appear in today's Gospel (and also in Matthew 8) see the same Jesus we see - the Holy One of God, the Messiah - and yet cannot see Him as we do: where we see a saviour, they see a destroyer and a tormenter. This is because they are totally without love. Today's Gospel faces us with the same decision made by the Angels and Demons (to love God or to reject His love) and challenges us to live our lives according to that decision. Fundamentally we are asked: do I want Christ for my Saviour, or my destroyer?
In February 2015 a woman from Lancashire named Cecilia Bleasdale was at a designer outlet in Cheshire, shopping for a dress for her daughter’s upcoming wedding on the Island of Colonsay in the Outer Hebrides. Finding one she liked she snapped a photo of it and sent it to her daughter to ask what she thought.
Her daughter didn’t think that a white dress with gold lace was a good idea! So far, so reasonable - the only person wearing white at a wedding should be the bride. Only, it wasn’t a white dress with gold lace, it was a dark blue dress with black lace. Because of the combination of colours, and the lighting when the photo was taken, some people saw a white and gold dress while others (looking at the same photo) saw blue and black. The Dress, or rather this particular photo, played a trick on people’s eyes.
It wasn’t just Mrs Bleasdale’s daughter who was confused. She shared it on Facebook and her friends all disagreed about what colour the dress was. For a whole week, the entire 124 strong population of Colonsay was talking about the colour of that dress. Then it went global; a popular website picked up the story and shared it on their main page. From there it took off, and tens of millions of people started talking about the colour of the Dress - including celebrities and serious academics, and to this day there isn’t a consensus on why some people saw black and blue while others saw white and gold: it’s an amazing quirk of the human mind that two people can look at the exact same thing and each see something totally different.
It isn’t just our eyes that play this trick on us - but the way we feel about something or someone can have a profound impact on how we view their actions. If we like someone, if we’re generally well disposed towards them, then we are more forgiving or enthusiastic about the things they do, we’re more willing to make excuses for them when they do something bad and to praise the good that they do. On the other hand, if we’ve decided that we dislike someone, we can be less forgiving and less enthusiastic about them. We’re more likely to condemn their failings and downplay their successes. In the extreme, when someone we like does something really bad we want to forgive them, or conversely when someone we dislike does something really good we can be cynical about it and try to find some evil ulterior motive, or simply refuse to accept it is good.
It's this kind of perception difference that’s happening in today’s Gospel. Jesus goes into Capernaum, into the Synagogue, and begins to teach. Some are held spellbound by it, a new teaching, they said, a teaching with authority behind it. This is what will lead many to come to Him looking for advice, or for healing, or for a master to follow. But then the possessed man comes into the Synagogue, and the demon possessing him asks “Have you come to destroy us?” Another version of this same story occurs in chapter eight of Matthew’s Gospel; the Lord encounters a pair of Demon-possessed men, and the demons ask “have you come to torment us before our time?”
Why this difference in perception? Why do St Matthew and St Mark include this episode in their accounts? The answer tells us something, not only about the demons, but about the state of our own souls.
Because Angels, remembering that Demons are fallen Angels, and human beings have something in common; God made us, human beings and Angels, with the power to knowand the ability to love, and He gave both us and them the ability to choose. He made it so that we could know Him, and knowing Him choose whether or not to reciprocate His love. The Demons are those Angels who chose to reject God – to reject love itself.
Because of this choice, the Demons exist in constant unbearable agony: they are creatures who were made to love and who cannot love. They know the perfect love and happiness which they have rejected and they constantly feel the pain of their separation from it. Their suffering is the suffering of a soul without love. They know who Christ is, but because they say it – “you are the Holy One of God” – in other words, the Messiah, the Saviour. Yet, because His mission is fundamentally one of love – His mission is to offer a sacrifice of love which is open only to those who follow His commandments, His law of love, they are unable to see in Him a Saviour. So distorted are these creatures of Spirit, that they can look on Jesus, the loving Saviour, the symbol of the Father’s love for His creation, and see only a destroyer and a torturer – the love they have rejected is supposed to be a radiant glorious light, but to them is like a burning fire.
We are presented with the same decision the Angels have already faced: will we choose to reciprocate God’s love or will we choose to reject it? If we choose the latter, if we willingly cut ourselves off from God’s love, then today’s Gospel is a grave reminder of what is waiting: the soul without love cannot be saved, because it cannot see in Christ a Saviour, but only a tormenter.
There is a snag though, one difference in the choice we make. The Angels are creatures of pure spirit, but we live in the world, we have bodies. What for them was an instant choice, accept or reject, is more complicated for us.
For us, love isn’t just an intellectual choice, it is a virtue, a habit, which is made up and formed of lots of little choices. Where the Angels made one decision, we make thousands upon thousands of decisions that move us in one direction or the other. We decide whether or not to come to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, we decide whether to help or to harm others, to be kind or to be cruel, to be sincere or to lie, to be generous or stingy, to be optimistic or cynical. Each of these decisions, in small ways or in large, shapes our soul. Each of these decisions opens us up to love or closes us off to it.
Love is the filter through which we will see Christ on judgment day. If we have lived lives of genuine love for God and for our neighbour, then we will see in Him our Saviour and Redeemer. If we have lived lives closed off to love, embracing bitterness, or spite, or cruelty, or simple indifference to God and to one another, then we will see in Him our destroyer.
Unlike a trick of the light, or an optical illusion, this is a real decision we get to make. Which Christ do we want to see?
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