Jesus (35 page)

For the readers of Mark's Gospel—who were both Jewish
and
Gentile Christians—the tale of Jesus's first interaction in pagan lands would have been an especially important lesson. And for the next generation of Christians, the story would have been used as a reminder of Jesus's outreach to those in non-Jewish communities. His power has no boundaries. Neither does his love.

Mark ends his story eloquently:
Kai pantes ethaumazon.
And all were amazed. All marveled. All were astonished.

S
ISTER
T
ÉLESFORA GAVE US
the name of the town now associated with the Gerasene demoniac, Kursi, on the “other side” of the Sea of Galilee, opposite from Capernaum. In Talmudic texts it was called Kurshi and identified with pagan worship. It is only about five hundred meters east of the sea, which would make rushing into the sea easier for the frenzied pigs.

George and I weren't sure what would greet us in Kursi, since so few people had mentioned the town to us. Plus, there was the devilishly complex problem of authenticity, as I mentioned. Like other scholars Murphy-O'Connor points out that the three different names for the place (the “land of the Gerasenes, Gadaranes, Gergesenes”) are “suspicious,” which means that it is difficult to claim that any one place is authentic.
¹⁴
But in this place, more than at any other site we visited, any questions of authenticity seemed to vanish.

We drove one afternoon to a site devoid of visitors. The sole caretaker greeted us and told us to feel free to explore the ruins of the monastery and the surrounding grounds. She told us that we would be able to see where the miracle happened “by standing on a rock behind the monastery.”

The ruins of Kursi were discovered in 1970, when road work uncovered the walls of a fifth-century church and monastery. Built of a dark gray mottled stone, the complex includes what appears to be community space for the monks, outdoor workspace (including an olive press), and a church with a baptistry. On the floor are dusty mosaics arranged in complicated geometric patterns.

Though I'm no expert, the presence of a Byzantine monastery seemed to heighten the possibility that from ancient times Kursi was considered the place of the miracle. Later I checked Murphy-O'Connor, and he confirmed my hunch: “The Byzantine date of the material suggests that this was identified as the precise site of the Gospel miracle.”
¹⁵
(I was pleased that the expert agreed with me!)

We wandered around the monastic ruins and examined the mosaics. I wondered aloud where the view of the famous hillside would be. But as we exited the site, the hills immediately—
euthus
—loomed up, so close it seemed that we could almost touch them. The dusty brown hillsides were dotted with trees and low bushes, and higher up—easily seen with the naked eye—were the caves, or tombs, that pockmarked the landscape. “Just like I pictured it,” said George.

Scholarly controversies aside, everything fit. The topography lent itself to the Gospel story. The tombs were far enough up the mountainside that the poor man would have felt a sense of distance and isolation. It would have been easy for people to avoid the terrifying man living on the hillside, but the tombs were not so far that the people wouldn't have heard the man's shrieks. I could picture the pigs rooting around on the gentle slopes, and it was easy to visualize the herd rushing into the sea. The sea level was higher in antiquity (modern-day irrigation has caused a drop in the level), and so the distance between the scrubby hillside and the shoreline would have been shorter than it is today.

The wind blew strongly while we stood there in silence, the only pilgrims. All at once, I could see in my mind's eye, and almost hear, the thundering herd rushing headlong to the sea.

George and I stood there for some time. A rickety metal staircase attached to the side of the mountain allowed visitors to go closer to the tombs. I knew that the story meant a great deal to George, so I withdrew to allow him to pray in the mountains and near the tombs.

W
HO HASN
'
T FELT LIKE
the demoniac at some point? In fact, as I was writing this book, I reviewed the journals I kept during my annual retreats to refresh my memory of experiences in meditating on certain Gospel passages. And on the first page of the first journal, begun only a few months after entering the novitiate, I scribbled some notes about my “demons.” At age twenty-eight, I was just beginning to explore my interior life in earnest and to understand how God was trying to free me:

At the time, I was consumed with worry over an upcoming stay in Kingston, Jamaica, where I would work among the poor as part of my Jesuit training. Never having spent time in the developing world, I was terrified of contracting some rare illness. These were my demons at the time, and I begged God to rid me of them.

At various points early in my Jesuit training, I grew so frustrated with the things that so obviously kept me bound, kept me unfree, that I would lie on the floor, asking God to “rid me” of my demons. It sounds overwrought, but I was growing increasingly aware of the unhealthy parts of my personality that made me into a fearful and anxious person. I would beg Jesus to heal me
now
. Lying on the floor, I would wait for instantaneous healing, like that received by the Gerasene demoniac. It was easy for me to feel like the demoniac. And I could hear his cries in my own.

It is also easy to see signs of “demons” in others, particularly those who engage in long-term, sometimes lifelong, self-destructive behavior. I have several friends who have been alcoholics, overeaters, and addicted to drugs; a few friends have faced long-term emotional problems. They aren't evil of course, but all of them longed to be freed from their “demons.” In their own ways, they cried out in pain, not so differently from the demoniac centuries ago.

The Gospel story suggests that some of the possessed man's friends and family may have tried to help him. Perhaps the chains were used not so much to prevent him from harming others as from harming himself. Generally in the New Testament those close to possessed persons try to seek healing for them. But some of his family and friends, and others in the land of the Gerasenes who did not know him, probably avoided the terrifying man, compounding his sense of isolation.

It is often the same in our lives. Self-destructive behavior can be frightening, and people withdraw out of fear of being harmed; they also withdraw because they are afraid of what someone else's torment might reveal about their own lives. Many of us would prefer not to recognize that we too contain a “legion” of demons that seem to have power over us. So we avoid the people on those mountainsides.

It is likewise frightening to confront your own powerlessness. How painful it is to see someone you love harm himself or herself. How much we want liberation for the person. But how impotent we often feel when we try to help them, when we look for some way in which to heal them.

In the story of the Gerasene demoniac, the man's family and friends seem far away. Unlike in other situations, there is no mother or father to beg Jesus for healing. There is no group of friends to carry the man to Jesus's house and lower him through the roof. Perhaps the demoniac's friends have stopped attempting to help him after many years of trying in vain. Or perhaps they are like people today who, in the interests of self-preservation, pull away from the person who is bent on self-destruction. A man who is father to several children may want to help his troubled brother, but his first responsibility is to the welfare of his own children. So he withdraws from his brother and his “demons.”

This is understandable. Often families and friends are encouraged by professional counselors to pull away from “toxic” personalities; in some cases this may be the only way that the family and friends can maintain their own mental health. The friends and family of the Gerasene demoniac probably tried various methods of healing—they may have already taken him to exorcists. But nothing worked, and now the man was left alone. “No one had the strength to subdue him” also means “no one could help him.”

Maybe that's why he has become so self-destructive, “bruising himself with stones.” Others reject him, so he rejects himself further. The man's physical strength is also an indicator of the implacability, the persistence, and the rootedness of the demonic presence.

As in the Gospel story, only God has the power to liberate fully. And, as in the Gospel story, we need to name our own demons—we need to say, “I am vain” or “I am greedy” or “I have this addiction” in order to open ourselves to healing. Naming or acknowledging our sinful patterns is the first step to healing.

In my own life, I began to be freed from my demons after years of retreats, spiritual direction, psychotherapy, conversations with friends, hard work, and grace. Of course I'm not fully free; my gradual healing has not been as dramatic, nor as complete, as the healing of the Gerasene demoniac. But Jesus the Liberator always calls us to new life—to come out of our tombs.

Such healing is often performed with great calm. Often I see Jesus's calm response to the loud, even violent behavior of the man reflected in the eyes of the best spiritual directors. When I have spat out my worst demons in their presence, they have reacted with that same imperturbable calm. The calm itself is a kind of healing.

Still, it's hard to seek out healing. The turmoil that we see in the man, the divided heart that we witness, parallels our being torn between not wanting to spend another moment with our demons and fearing the means by which we might be healed. What would I have to do to be healed? Will it be painful? Yet if we take a chance, emerge from our tombs, prostrate ourselves before God—not in a subservient way, but in a way that acknowledges God to be our “higher power”—and ask for healing, God can free us.

God's healing power is also frightening. Sometimes we act like the swineherds of the region. Rather than desiring to be with the one who heals, we ask him to leave. Now, on a literal level, the swineherds may simply have been infuriated by the death of their pigs; Jesus had just made it more difficult for them to earn a living. But on an allegorical level, the swineherds represent all those who fear change, even for the good. They stand for all those who fear leaving the tombs.

A
S
I
WAS WRITING
this chapter, it dawned on me that during our time in Kursi, I hadn't asked George what was so meaningful to him about the Gerasene demoniac; I didn't want to intrude on his meditations. So I wrote him to ask.

George said the passage was one of the two key experiences of prayer that he had during his Long Retreat, also known as the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, a four-week retreat that invites a person into the life of Jesus through imaginative prayer. Jesuits make the Spiritual Exercises at least twice—once as a young novice and later at the end of their training. My friend's experience with this story during his novitiate would continue to “shape and define” his life as a Jesuit over the next twenty-five years. During that retreat, George wrote in his journal:

George did not know that he would soon enter a two-year period of depression that he described as the most painful time of his life. It began when he stopped using alcohol to numb his feelings. Over time and with some help from his brother Jesuits, caring counselors, and “friends in recovery,” he was finally able to “get up out of the tomb” he was living in and “begin to live again.” The “gift of depression,” as he called it, has helped him to connect with the men and women he has ministered to as a prison chaplain. I'll let him end this chapter in his own words:

T
HE
G
ERASENE
D
EMONIAC

Mark 5:1–20

(See also Matthew 8:28–34; Luke 8:26–39)

They came to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and was drowned in the lake.