＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊   

２Samuel 15:13-14, 30; 16:5-13

 

Ps 3:2-3, 4-5, 6-7

Lord, rise up and save me.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊      

Mark 5:1-20

 They arrived on the other side of the lake

In the region of the Gera­senes.  No sooner did Jesus leave the boat than he was met by a man with evil spirits who had come from the tombs.   He lived among the tombs and no one could restrain him, even with a chain.   

He had often been bound with fetters and chains but he would pull the chains apart and smash the fet­ters, and no one had the strength to control him.   Night and day he stayed among the tombs on the hillsides, and was continually screaming and beating himself with stones.

 When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell at his feet   and cried with a loud voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God? For God’s sake I beg you, do not torment me.”   He said this because Jesus had commanded, “Come out of the man, evil spirit.”

 And when Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” he replied, “Legion is my name, for we are many.”  And all of them kept begging Jesus not to send them out of that region.

 Now, a great herd of pigs was feeding on the hillside,   and the evil spirits begged him, “Send us to the pigs and let us go into them.”   So Jesus let them go. The evil spirits came out of the man and went into the pigs, and immediately the herd rushed down the cliff and all were drowned in the lake.   The herdsmen fled and reported this in the town and in the countryside, so all the peo­ple came to see what had happened.

 They came to Jesus and saw the man freed of the evil spirits sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the same man who had been possessed by the legion. They were afraid.  And when those who had seen it told what had happened to the man and to the pigs,   the people begged Je­sus to leave their neigh­­borhood.

 When Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed begged to stay with him.   Jesus would not let him and said, “Go home to your people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.”   So he went throughout the country of Deca­po­lis telling ­every­one how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were astonished.

 

Gospel Reflection：

Pharmakos

In Ancient Athens, the State would choose some men from societal margins and keep them. When a crisis threatened the society, it would cast lots, select one of them, strip him naked, parade him through the streets where everyone assembled abuse him, and sacrifice him outside the city.

He was ‘Pharmakos,’ meaning poison and cure. By absorbing the evils of society – which were a legion – he became poison; by his death, he became their cure.

(Recognize) similar dynamics in pharmacology?) The man among the tombs absorbed the legion of societal evils and the society lived a ‘normal’ life at his expense. Jesus liberating him upset the carefully calibrated societal balance: who would now bear for them their inner demons?

To whom can they cast off their own sins and pretend to be virtuous? But Jesus returns the healed man to them, to help them own up their demons and find healing in God’s mercy.

 

St. John Bosco,

John Bosco was born in August of 1815

In 1841, John Bosco was ordained a priest.

St. John Bosco died in Jan. 31, 1888,

He was canonized on Easter Sunday of 1934,