Jesus came to the other side of the lake, to the region of the Gadarenes, in the land of the Gentiles; perhaps he was looking for a secluded place to rest with his disciples. There the Lord cured two demoniacs who met him. Near the place there was a herd of swine; the demons begged him, if he would cast them out of these tormented men, to send them into the herd. And the Lord permitted him to do so. And they went out and entered into the swine. Then the whole herd ran with impetus down the slope toward the sea and perished in the water. The swineherds fled, and when they reached the city they told everything, especially about the demoniacs. At this, the whole city went out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to depart from their region.
They begged him to leave that place. It was the great opportunity lost by these people; they had God himself among them, and they did not know how to see him. Perhaps He never passed through that land again; they had Him so near, and they begged Him to go away! To Him who bore all good things with Him! How inhospitable the world is sometimes to its Lord! Often, for many, it is material goods that count, and it is not rare to see how people try to build a society in which the Lord is not present, they leave no room for him, "as if God did not deserve any interest in the area of man's operational and associative project". He who gives meaning to everything is excluded. The Lord illuminates pain, joy, life, death, work? And without him nothing is worthwhile. "Exclusion from God, rupture with God, disobedience to God; throughout human history this has been and is sin in various forms, which can go as far as the denial of God and of his existence, even atheism". At the root of many attitudes that reject or exclude supernatural truth is a radical practical materialism, the appreciation of material goods above all else, which prevents us from seeing the action of the Lord in what surrounds us.
We tell Jesus that we want to place him at the summit of all human tasks, through a professional work done with conscience; that we want him to enter fully into our life, into the family, to give meaning to what we are and what we possess: to our intelligence, to our heart, to friendship, to the clean loves of each one according to his particular vocation. We tell him that we want to be vigilant, like the sentinel, to give him entrance into our soul, even when he presents himself in a different way than we expected.