Our Venerable Mother Theodora of Alexandria.
Post-feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God.
Galatians 1:1-10; 1:20-2:5; Mark 5:1-20.
Read Mark 5:1-20
Picture an empty tomb in first-century Palestine. There, among broken bones and silent stone, lives a man undone—naked, self-harming, howling, violent, irrational. That’s not a horror show—it’s someone’s son, under demonic attack.
In Mark 5, the man’s condition—violence, self-abuse, irrational plurality (“Legion” within one), morbidity—are unmistakable signs of demonic oppression. Luke adds another: nakedness, the stripping of humanity.
But these markers aren’t just ancient. Today, demons—spiritual beings—show themselves as:
- Violence in communities or broken marriages,
- Self-harm or addictive behaviors,
- Irrational, fractured identity,
- Obsession with morbid or deathly content,
- Fixation on nakedness as spectacle or shame.
Yet amidst this darkness, there’s a trembling thread of hope: the oppressed man cries out, “Don’t torture me!”—and that fear betrays fear. He knows something, or Someone, powerful is present. Our modern-day opponents—despair, addiction, grief—are themselves terrified of true healing. And the only one they fear more is the Healer.
Fulton Sheen once said: “When the devil is most effective, he persuades us that evil is good, and that good is evil.” The Gerasene man’s neighbors feared Jesus more than the demons who haunted their land. So too, our own age trembles not at depravity, but at the One who exposes it.
So go—into the tombs of your life: despair, shame, chaos. Don’t stand at the edge. Walk in. Let your presence as one of God’s own be the medicine the contagion fears. Fear not. You bring the victory of Jesus Christ. Be clothed in His peace, calm the violence, heal the irrational, and expose the darkness with God’s light in you.