The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost finds us once again listening to St. Paul’s Epistle to the

Romans (10:1-10). As Christians we are no longer tied by an external and institutional law. St. Paul  makes it quite clear that the person of Jesus Christ has become our law. It is no longer a matter of knowing whether this or that action is prescribed or forbidden by a text, but of asking ourselves if it does or does not conform to Christ. If we truly confess with our lips and believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Lord of our lives, then we will freely do what is asked of us by God.

Our Gospel Reading from Matthew (8:28-34;9:1) relates the remarkable exorcism performed by Jesus in the non-Jewish territory of the Gerasenes. There would be no reason for kosher Jews to keep swine. The exorcism is recounted to accentuate Jesus’ power in His ministry as well as in the Church today.

This is one of the very few instances in the New Testament where a miracle among the Gentiles (non Jews) failed to elicit faith. They asked Jesus to leave their neighbourhood! Either they were afraid of Him or saw Him as a threat to the local economy. More probably, they saw Jesus as a threat to the status quo. They did not want to change.

The same can be true of our spiritual lives. It is much easier to settle for the outward forms of religion than to let the Spirit enter deep inside us where He might unsettle the attitudes, work habits and relationships with our neighbours to which we have become accustomed over the years. Any radical self-examination is dangerous for us since we just might discover that something needs changed! Jesus called us to do just that! This week, can we look at our lives in the more relaxed atmosphere of summer and see if there is something that needs changed? Do we then ask jesus to come and help us change or ask Him to leave the territory of our lives?