In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. In today’s gospel, Christ encounters a demon-possessed man. A man possessed not by one demon, but by 5,000 demons. At the time of Christ, a legion of Roman soldiers consisted of about 5,000 men.
So this was one man that had 5,000 demons inside of him. Where in the world did all of these demons come from? And how do they have authority over this one man? I’d like to break my sermon into two parts.
Today I’ll speak about the origin of these demons, and in my next sermon I’ll speak about the authority that they have over man. In the very first verse of the book of Genesis, we read, “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. The holy fathers teach that God made the angelic world before He made the physical material world. The angels were made on the very first day of creation, but mankind on the last day of creation.
And the reasons the angels were made first, or the reason the angels were made first, is so that they could carry out the will of God in the created world in preparation for man. The ultimate focus of creation is not the angels, it is mankind. Angels in fact were made to be servants of man.“ In the first chapter of his epistle to the Hebrews, the holy apostle Paul describes angels as ministering spirits and forth to minister to those who will inherit salvation. The role of the angels is to maintain all of creation for mankind.
The angels are behind the proper order of all things. The angels maintain the universe, the planets and the stars. The angels uphold gravity. They govern the seasons that we experience.
People have guardian angels, nations have guardian angels, churches have guardian angels. And if you want to take this even further, the purpose of angels is to prepare for the ultimate man, the Theantropos, the God-Man, Jesus Christ. St. Paul tells us in Colossians that all things were created through Christ and for Christ.
He is the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning, the end, the first and the last. He is the purpose of everything, including the angels. The role of the angels then is to maintain all of creation and to serve mankind in order that Christ might be born into the world as a human being. And through his incarnation, unite the divine nature and the human nature.
God’s ultimate purpose in the incarnation is union with man, and the angels serve this very purpose. The greatest and most powerful of all the angels created by God was an angel by the name of Lucifer. Lucifer means the bearer of light. He was at the summit of created perfection.
His glory in his power was unmatched by any other angel, any other created thing. So how and why does the angel Lucifer fall from the height of such great glory and become the devil? How and why does the most perfect creature become the most depraved creature? The how has to do with free will and the why with pride and jealousy?
God created both the angels and mankind with free will. In order for free will to be truly free will, by necessity the option or the opportunity to disobey God must exist or else free will be just an illusion, will be robots. God out of his love for his creation respects the free will of his angels and of mankind and desires that they willingly love him and obey him, otherwise our love of God would be meaningless because it wouldn’t come from one own free choice. And it’s important to say something else here.
Once an angel chooses to disobey God they are unable to repent whereas a man as long as he breathes has the opportunity to repent. Why is that? Why can man repent but the angels cannot? Saint Erenaeus of Leon explains that angels when they were created they were created fully developed, having perfect intelligence and a mind completely illumined by God’s grace.
They were created fully aware and not subject to passion therefore they knew exactly what they were doing. Due to their perfection they had one opportunity to decide obedience to God or disobedience. They had one opportunity to make that decision and their decision once made is irrevocable, unchangeable, they cannot go back. Interestingly there are accounts from the lives of the saints both ancient saints and modern saints who prayed for the salvation of Satan and the demons.
It was revealed to them that God is love and would forgive anyone who repents but that to fall in angels they refused to repent. In their perfect knowledge once these angels make their decision their will becomes fixed. Their will becomes fixed because their mind is made up. They knew everything from the beginning.
So they have no excuse for their disobedience and by the nature of how they were made they are unwilling to repent because of their perfection. Man however was not created fully mature and developed. He was made inferior to the angels both spiritually and intellectually. He was subject to change but had the potential to grow into perfection and due to his infant-like state if a man sins he is still capable of repentance and spiritual growth while he is still alive.
Now back to the fall of Lucifer in chapter 10 of the gospel of Luke Christ says I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven. This of course is a reference to his fall from heaven after committing the very first sin against God. And what was the sin of Lucifer? Pride and self-love.
He was mesmerized with himself. He looked at his own beauty and perfection and he saw that he was the greatest of all creation and greater than the rest of the angels and the heavenly hosts. And rather than giving glory to God as the source of his beauty and perfection he began to think he was sufficient in and of himself and that he could find true happiness apart from God. He began to love himself more than he loved God and even beyond that he began to love himself instead of God.
And in his pride as we read in chapter 14 of Isaiah Lucifer says in his heart I will ascend into heaven and I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high. So Lucifer rebelled against God.
He rebelled knowing that God is the uncreated one and without any equal. He rebelled knowing that God is the Almighty one and the origin of all life including his. Remember as I said he had perfect knowledge. In fact some of the fathers say that Lucifer’s intellect was clarity itself.
So his sin was pure malice pure malice. That’s why as I said his decision and all the angels after him is unchangeable. In this way Lucifer becomes Satan the devil and evil is born. Evil does not exist in and of itself.
Evil is the misuse of free will and this started with Lucifer the first of the fallen angels. And his rebellion against God wasn’t enough. In his fury he wanted to drag down all the angels with him. He wanted to destroy others with him.
We read in chapter 12 of the book of Revelation that Satan drew a third of the stars of heaven with him. The fathers say that this is a reference to the number of angels that followed Satan. Together with him they were cast out of heaven. These fallen angels become the demons.
The five thousand demons we hear about in today’s gospel this is their origin. Oftentimes people ask how many angels and how many demons are there and I’m going to end with this and my next sermon will continue. So they ask how many angels and how many demons are there. According to the Holy Fathers when God made the heavens he created an immeasurable amount of angels.
St. Sarah of Jerusalem, so he’s from the fourth century. St. Sarah of Jerusalem says something very interesting about the number of angels.
I’m going to read that quote for you. He says imagine how great in number the Roman people are. So the people of the Roman Empire in the fourth century imagine how great a number they are. Imagine how great in number the other barbarian peoples that exist are and imagine how many have died in the last hundred years.
Imagine how many have been buried in a thousand years. Now imagine the number of all of mankind from Adam until today he’s speaking about his his day. Great is their multitude but it is a small number in comparison with the angels whose numbers are far greater. The angels are the 99 sheep whereas the human race is the one sheep.
By the greatness of a place one can judge the numbers of those who dwell in it. The earth that we inhabit is a mere dot in the heavens. Thus the heaven that surrounds it must have a much greater number of inhabitants. So in other words brothers and sisters we cannot fathom the number of angels and fallen angels in the world.
So it should not surprise us that in today’s gospel one single demon possessed man had five thousand demons in him. The good news though is that there are twice as many holy angels as there are fallen ones since only a third of them fell and each one of us at our baptism received his own personal unique guardian angel to be with him or her and to protect the person for all of their life. This reminds me and I’ll finish with this of the story from the life of St. Moses the Black, St.
Moses of Ethiopia who was struggling with passions and went to his elder Abba Isidor and was telling him how he was struggling and how he was falling and how he was afraid. And so Abba Isidor takes him to the roof of the monastery and he says to him look look out to the west he looks to the west and he sees a horde lesions of fallen angels demons marching towards them and then Abba Isidor says to him look to the right and when he looks to his right to the east he sees a greater number of angels more glorious and greater in strength than the demons. I’ll continue my sermon next time and I’ll speak about the authority or the supposed authority that these demons have over the life of men and live the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.