And that among the inhabitants of that region there were foolish people," says St. John Chrysostom, "is clear from the outcome of this whole episode. For when they should have prostrated themselves in adoration and admired his power, they sent word to him, begging him to leave their territory. "8 Jesus went to visit them and they could not understand who was there, in spite of the wonders he had done. This was the greatest folly of these people: they did not recognize Jesus.
The Lord passes close to our lives every day. If our hearts are attached to material things, we will not recognize him; and there are many ways, some of them very subtle, to tell him to leave our domains, our life, for no one can serve two masters, because either he will dislike the one and love the other, or he will adhere to the first and despise the second: you cannot serve God and mammon9.
We know from our own experience the danger we run of serving earthly goods, in its multiple manifestations of disordered desire for greater goods, gentrification, comfort, luxury, whims, unnecessary expenses, etc.; and we also see what happens around us: "Many men seem to be guided by economy, in such a way that almost all their personal and social life is tinged with a certain materialistic spirit "10. 10 They think that their happiness lies in material goods and are filled with anxiety to obtain them.
We must be detached from all that we have. In this way, we will know how to use all the goods of the earth according to God's will, and we will have our heart in Him and in the goods that never run out. Disassociation makes of life a delicious path of austerity and efficacy. The Christian must frequently examine whether he is vigilant so as not to fall into comfort, or into a gentrification that is in no way compatible with being a disciple of Christ; whether he tries not to create superfluous needs for himself; whether the things of the earth bring him closer to God or separate him from Him. We can and should always be frugal in our personal needs, curbing superfluous expenses, not giving in to whims, overcoming the tendency to create false needs for ourselves, being generous in our almsgiving.
We can also consider today in our prayer whether we are ready to throw away from us whatever hinders us in order to draw closer to Christ, as did Bartimaeus, the blind man who begged for alms on the outskirts of Jericho.
The Lord is worth infinitely more than all created goods. It will not happen in our life as it did in the life of those Gerasenes: the whole city went out to meet Jesus and, seeing him, they begged him to leave their region12. On the contrary, let us say to him, in the words of St. Bonaventure's prayer for after Communion: may You always be (...) my inheritance, my possession, my treasure, in which my soul and my heart will always be fixed, firm and unshakably rooted13. Lord, where would I go without you?
Hablar con Dios