The fifth Sunday of St. Matthew presents to us two demoniacs who meet with the Lord, so we have in front of us an episode of exorcism, an essential part of our Lord’s activity on earth. But what is an exorcism? It means being freed from the evil spirit. The evil spirit has its beginnings with the lie of Adam, which is actually the lie that dwells in all of us. It consists in not recognizing God as infinite love for us. This lie gives us distrust in the Lord. And the distrust in the Source of our life gives us fear and makes us run away from the True Life, our God.

The whole Gospel is an exorcism because it reveals to us the truth that we are all the children of God and that God loves us, so we have no reason to be afraid. We received that truth that makes us live. In these exorcisms appear the so called possessed people, or we might call them obsessed. In the end, we are all a little bit obsessed to some extent, some more and some maybe a little less. We all have our own obsessions, which means we live our lives in fear and mistrust.

Indeed, it is precisely the fear, the fear of death that dictates our every action. The first thing I think of is how to save myself. It is this fear that makes us selfish and makes us do evil things. But it is also good to have this kind of fear. We must distinguish though what it means to be afraid and what it means to be obsessed with it. We can control our fear, we can dominate it. In the end, our whole life is a control of fear, which is the opposite of faith. Fear and faith go together, and they are exactly the opposite. They coexist, but what is given to one of them is taken away from the other. We say at every Divine Liturgy, before we partake of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: “With the fear of God, faith and love, draw near!”

Only at the very the end we will see these things clearly, and then faith will be whole. For now, our real struggle is always between faith and distrust, between fear and hope, between anguish and sadness, and the joy of returning home to the House of God, in full communion with Him. This is the real struggle of our own paths in this life. And in this fight, we have the power of the Word of Truth that performs the exorcism in us.

Exorcism is a very serious thing, because it accomplishes exactly what the light does with darkness: where the light enters, the darkness leaves, where the truth enters, the lie leaves. The night and the fear exist, but where the sun and faith enter, the night and fear disappear. Our whole life is a struggle in this sense. May the Lord Who exorcizes our fears and brings us together, help us get out of the desert of our anxieties and our resentments, so that we can always have His Gospel as principle of light and life.