Sometimes there is no strength to begin some task, no strength to reassess one's position - civic, religious, whatever it may be - and simply no strength to get up. There is no strength because we have spent it on something or because an illness torments us; it does not matter. Sin or sickness - does it matter? Perhaps sin, perhaps sickness. Often no line can be drawn between them.

We very much want this, we very much want clarity, but we do not have it - and we do not need it, for there is only good and evil, and only between them is a strict demarcation line needed. But there is no need to classify either one or the other. We will be told: we do not know whom to go to - a doctor or a priest. It is worth going to both, but it is important to remember: we are going to God so that He may heal us.

Today people speak much about cooperation between the priest and the psychologist. And this is good: the time of divergence between types of activity has passed, since a fundamental limit has been reached, and before us is a time when convergence slowly begins again. This will enrich everyone, for in every phenomenon of the visible world there is the imprint of the Creator - but it is revealed from different angles. To see here not a "flat" picture, but a "three-dimensional" one, costs great labor - but this labor is blessed

Much has been said and written about the world's reaction to Jesus' witness to the Kingdom that He brought into the world, just as much has been said and written about its reaction to Him Himself. And yet the brightest illustrations of this reaction are precisely the Gospel stories, despite the brevity often characteristic of them.

Such is also the story of Jesus' healing of the possessed man. In itself, from a spiritual point of view, such a healing was an outstanding event, even apart from the fate of the particular person freed from the burdensome power of the dark forces over him. But the inhabitants of those places were pagans, and in those times this meant practical irreligion. It is hard to say what they thought about the possessed man living not far from them, but in any case his healing, it appears, did not impress them very much. Something else impressed them instead: the loss of an entire, and probably rather large, herd of pigs.

Of course, the first reaction of anyone reading the Gospel to such indifference will be surprise, and perhaps indignation. But if one thinks about it, the reaction of the inhabitants of a typical pagan city was completely natural for pagans. Pagans are simply people who live by the laws of the untransformed world and know, or do not wish to know, any others. And in the untransformed world, inertia, worldview stereotypes, and behavioral patterns play an enormous role. People who live by its laws feel truly comfortable in it, and it never occurs to them that this comfort is deficient by definition.

The abnormality of the situation is emphasized by the constant presence beside the inhabitants of the city of a herd of pigs: from the point of view of the Torah, pigs are unclean animals, defiling the place where they live and the people who come into contact with them. Accordingly, the pagans in the Gospel story live in a state of uncleanness that is normal for them, just as it is generally normal for the fallen world. And all their behavior, all their reactions are "tuned" to this fallen world. The spiritual dimension in the proper sense of the word does not exist for them, while they understand very well what material loss is. And therefore the presence of Jesus frightens them.

Of course, trouble can be expected from Him, especially if the trouble is the very presence of the spiritual dimension in one's own life. And the townspeople honestly, with all the frankness characteristic of man, ask Him to leave. And He leaves: the Kingdom is not imposed by force; it can be accepted only by free will.

It is no accident that there are so many stories of healing in the Gospel: every healing is a witness to the Kingdom. But, as can be seen, not everyone understands the essence of what is happening, even when everything happens right before his eyes. Hence the displeasure of the Pharisees around Jesus: Jesus speaks of the forgiveness of sins, and who can forgive a person's sins except God?

Yet even from the point of view of the ideas generally accepted in those days, the situation in this regard was not so unambiguous. The fact is that the question of a person's forgiveness of sins was connected above all with the day of Judgment and the day of the Messiah's coming, which in the Judaism of the Gospel era coincided. And the Messiah took a certain, though not fully defined, part in God's judgment, testifying for or against the accused; His testimony could become decisive. Then, depending on the outcome of the Judgment, a person received, or did not receive, the right to enter the messianic Kingdom.

Jesus, however, somewhat corrects these familiar ideas: He speaks of the Kingdom entering the world, giving everyone the opportunity to begin with a clean slate. He speaks of the forgiveness of sins with reference not to the Judgment, nor even to the judgments a person may pass through before the day of the final Judgment. He speaks of the fact that the sins of everyone who touches the Kingdom and shares in its life are forgiven precisely because that person begins a new life in the Kingdom, leaving the old one behind. And every healing is an act of faith, faith as trust in God and in the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. That is why Jesus says to the healed man: "...your sins are forgiven."

For the Pharisees, as can be seen, what is happening has no relation to the Kingdom. At best they see simply a miracle, an action of God which by itself gives the One through whom it is performed no right to substitute Himself for God, or His own determinations for God's judgment. Here passes the boundary between the world and the Kingdom, the very boundary that is so clearly visible from the Kingdom and often completely invisible from the world.