Readings
I - Heb. 11: 32-40
II - Mk. 5: 1-20
JESUS IS MERCIFUL
In today’s Gospel passage Jesus casts the legion into the pigs and liberates the man from the legion. The man whom Jesus chased the legion, dwelt day and night among the tombs, on the mountains he was always crying and hurting himself with the stones, in short he was tortured and troubled by the possession. Jesus casted the legion and cured the man from its possession. The man desired to be with Jesus wherever he went but Jesus sent him back home and told him to proclaim the mercy of the Lord. The people of the city were not so happy because the cared much for the pigs than for the man who was cured. They pleaded Jesus to depart from their city.
We can from the Gospel passage of the day, draw two lessons for our life: one, Jesus is merciful and ha is powerful to deliver us from all our sufferings and setbacks as he did with the possessed man; and two, sometimes we are used to our sinful style of living that we don’t wish to be delivered from the same as did the people of the city who wanted Jesus to get away from their city. Today the church remember St. Bathilde, wife of Clovis II, king of France. She was a slave in the service of wife of Erchinoald, mayor of the palace of Neustria. Bathilde astounded the mayor so much with her unusual qualities and virtues that he desired to marry her after the death of her wife. Bathilde fled from him and returned back after he got married. King Clovis II met her in the mayor’s palace and impressed by her grace and virtue, freed her and got her married. She was thus raised from a slave to the status of queen. With the elevation her virtues did not diminish rather gave them a new lustre. God has the power to do anything, we only need to have faith in him and trust in his mercy.
