This picture helps us visualize the swarm of demons that coalesces around the soul they work to destroy.
Today’s Catholic Scripture Reading, beginning with Mark, 5:2, is directly connected:
“When He (Jesus) got out of the boat,
at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met Him.
The man had been dwelling among the tombs,
and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain.
In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains,
but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed,
and no one was strong enough to subdue him.
Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides
he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.
Catching sight of Jesus from a distance,
he ran up and prostrated himself before Him,
crying out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
I adjure you by God, do not torment me!”
(He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”)
He asked him, “What is your name?”
He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.”
And he pleaded earnestly with Him
not to drive them away from that territory.
Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside.
And they pleaded with Him,
“Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.”
And He let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine.
The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea,
where they were drowned.”
As always, Catholic Fundamentalism’s desire for quantification sees the possibilities in this passage. There was a known quantity of two thousand demons trying to destroy the poor, possessed man. Though not a popular analysis among most professional psychologists and psychiatrists, when we see mentally disordered people, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that the more disturbed they are, the more demons are disrupting their thought process. 2,000 may be the maximum number possible to work within a mind, though evil tyrants like Herod and Stalin may have a few more.
The man they possessed had lots of problems. He was violent, uncontrollable, couldn’t sleep, lived alone in bizarre surroundings, had amazing physical strength when angry, screamed in agony, and repeatedly hurt himself. Altogether, it seems reasonable to assume that he had 2,000 demons driving him nuts.
Questions arise. Can we quantify the number of demons in a person by the aberrance of their behavior? If he only did half as many crazy things, would he have only a thousand demons within? If we have only one of his problems, like sleeplessness, there are obviously fewer demons, but how many?
But, possessed as he was, he still wanted to be saved, and was able to think well enough to understand that Jesus could cure him. While the man still could control his destiny, approaching Jesus despite the horde of demons urging him not to do so, the demons still controlled him well enough to speak through him. Speaking as one, they admitted that they were “legion”, and begged Jesus to let them stay in the neighborhood, even though they couldn’t stay in the man any longer. So, the demons asked to be e-mailed into the two thousand pigs, each of which they promptly destroyed.
We may imagine that each of them was no larger than a electron. That, Catholic Fundamentalism assumes, is an appropriate size with which to begin to visualize spirits. Despite their small size, each of them was powerful enough to drive one pig to death, but two thousand of them could not do that to one man, though they certainly ruined his life until The Living Program, Jesus Christ, erased the living errors within him and restored his human program.
By the way, one of the most bizarre things about this Scriptural Passage concerns the number of pigs. 2,000 pigs is a lot of pigs! It indicates that there were large, sophisticated animal husbandry practices in the area, almost comparable to the “factory farms” of today.
