Those Gentiles, in spite of the miracle reported by the porters and of seeing the two demoniacs free and healthy, did not want to receive Jesus. How their houses and, above all, their souls would have been filled with good things; but they were blind to spiritual goods. As it happens today to so many; many have their projects to be happy, and too often they look to God simply as someone who will help them to carry them out. "The true state of things is quite the reverse. God has His plans for our happiness, and He is waiting for us to help Him realize them. And let it be quite clear that we cannot improve on God's plans."
Some Christians, being excessively attached to their ideas and whims, tell Jesus to withdraw from their life, precisely when he was closest to them and when they needed him most: when sickness, contradiction..., when they have lost material goods that probably had to be lost in order to receive the supreme Good, which arrives, on many occasions, by paths different from those they desired. Perhaps they were waiting for him in triumph, and he appears in ruin or failure; not in the failure produced by idleness, by not having provided the necessary means or study, which should lead in any case to an act of contrition and to restart with a firm purpose, but in the failure that comes when, in our understanding, all the human and supernatural means had been provided to get afloat. How many times the logic of God does not coincide with the logic of men! It is the moment to embrace his holy will: "Do you want it, Lord? I want it too!" How many times, faced with a contradiction that we did not expect, we have made this prayer our own, repeated in a thousand ways!
It has been said that "God's plan is of a piece". Perhaps the conversion of those Gentiles would have begun by the loss of these pigs, by the detachment that this implied; perhaps they would have been the first Gentiles to receive Baptism after the dispersion produced on the occasion of the first persecution in Judea. At the end of life, sometimes much earlier, we will see how those pieces that seemed loose and meaningless fit together: all things come together for the good of those who love God.
To discover the will of the Lord in all the events of life, even in the less pleasant ones, in those that have caused us harm and discomfort, to follow Christ closely in every circumstance, "we must be seriously detached from ourselves: from the gifts of intelligence, health, honor, noble ambitions, triumphs, successes," I am referring also (...) "I am referring also (...) to the will of the Lord in all the events of life, even in the less pleasant ones, in those that have caused us harm and discomfort, to follow Christ closely in every circumstance.
"I am referring also (...) to those clean illusions, with which we seek exclusively to give all the glory to God and to praise Him, adjusting our will to this clear and precise norm: Lord, I want this or that only if it pleases You, because if not, what is the point for me? In this way, we strike a mortal blow to selfishness and vanity, which are at work in all consciences; at the same time, we attain true peace in our souls, with a detachment that ends in an ever more intimate and intense possession of God.
It is necessary to purify the heart of disordered loves (often the disordered love of oneself, the excessive attachment to the goods one possesses or to those one would like to have, to one's own ideas and opinions, to the projects one has made for one's own happiness...) in order to trust more in our Father God. Then we will be able to see clearly and we will be able to interpret events correctly, always discovering Jesus in them.