Our Own Tombs

Maximos Pafilis, Bishop of Melitene (translation from the original Greek text)

Homily on the Gospel according to Matthew 8:28–34; 9:1

There are people who dwell in tombs without knowing it. I do not mean tombs of stone, I mean those hidden regions where one withdraws when life has wounded him heavily and prolongedly, the closed rooms of the soul with the drawn curtains, the silence that at first seems a refuge and slowly becomes a prison. The modern wayfarer knows this geography well. He walks it every evening, when he turns off the screen and remains alone with the noises of his own self.

The evangelical episode of the Gergesenes (Matt. 8, 28-34) takes place in such a place, only that there the desolation was also external. A country of gentiles, without ties to the God of Israel, and the herds of swine that grazed on its mountains were, for the eyes of a Jew, the visible proof that here the divine commandments had ceased to count. Within this landscape lived the two demoniacs. Outside the city, far from society, cut off almost even from their own self. Passers-by avoided that road. And who would blame them?

That which shocks most in their image is the loss of the name.…