Thoughts on Today's Gospel Reading

Folks,

Today's Scripture Readings included the account of the healing of the demoniac in the region of the Gerasenes as recorded in Mark 5:1-20. This story is rendered with differing details in the Gospels, and with various spellings for the Gerasenes. But that isn't the point of this blog entry. Rather, the focus is on what the demons within the afflicted man called themselves (Legion for they were many), where the demons went once they were cast out, what happened to the swine into which they had been cast, and the reaction of fear on the part of the inhabitants of that region.

It so happens that the 10th Roman Legion (Legio Decum Gemina) was at this time stationed in Antioch with authority over the Decapolis and Judea to keep the peace and suppress revolts. One of its four mascots was the boar - a wild pig - and to Jews, the Roman Gentiles were by definition unclean pigs. So when Jesus cast out the legion of demons in the demoniac and thence into a nearby herd of swine which promptly committed suicide by running off a nearby cliff and into the water (probable the Lake of Galilee), everyone knew exactly what Jesus' actions meant:

The demons infecting the Jews with hypocrisy and self-righteousness would be cast out into the swine of the Gentile Romans who would eventually commit suicide themselves with pagan rot and decadence.

Thus, if word got out to the Romans about this miracle - indeed, if Jesus were allowed to continue performing such acts in the open - then it wouldn't be long before the 10th Legion came down on the region in its full fury to avenge the death of its mascot.

Does that sound crazy? Just read what the Gospel says is the reaction of the people:

Those who witnessed the incident explained to them what had happened
to the possessed man and to the swine.
Then they began to beg him to leave their district.

Jesus was openly challenging the authority of the Roman State right from the beginning. And the Roman State eventually did self-destruct under the weight of the demonic immorality and perversion infecting it.

The same is today true of the liberal progressive Democratic United States of America. Those who fail to remember history are forever doomed to repeat it. Rome had its Tiberius Caesar, his boy play things, and his murderous court intrigues culminating in his suffocation at the hands of Caligula the Mad. We have our Barack Hussein Obama and his sanctification of sexual filth, perversion and the murder of unborn babies. The demons are now in the swine.