10th Sunday of Pentecost
The Healing of the Demoniac Boy
The "Golden Chain" connecting faith and prayer and fasting.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Sisters, we see a golden chain linking: belief and action, faith and fasting, what we say
we believe and what we do. We see two kinds of unbelief today, and two kinds of belief.
The man who had a lunatic son was rebuked by the Lord because of his unbelief:
"O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How
long shall I suffer you?"
(Matthew 17:17)
He was referring to the man, and also the people around him; they all had the first kind of
unbelief. This kind of unbelief is when we do not do good.
There was some reason why this boy was possessed by a demon. Demons do not dwell in
clean places; Demons live in dirty places. Unbelief is dirty; unbelief is sin. It could be
because of the boyÁ-?s sins or the manÁ-?s sins. The Lord showed that in this case it was
because of the manÁ-?s sins because He rebuked the man.
The Lord heals the boy and the Apostles wonder why they could not cast out the demon.
What does the Lord say?
Á-°Because of your unbelief.Á-?
This is a different kind of unbelief. It is a lack of internal knowledge and certainty. This
knowledge and certainty only comes about by living the Christian life.
LetÁ-?s look at the Apostles. Look at how they were in the beginning: arguments amongst
themselves, fears, questions that seem a little silly in retrospect. Look at them after the
resurrection and after Pentecost. They became fearless, wise, and humble. They had
changed.
How? By the Lord helping them gain internal belief inside their hearts. This is something
that cannot be taken away from us; it is living within us, but if one does not have that
kind of belief, then there are things that you cannot do Á-? such as cast out demons.
These are the two kinds of unbelief. There is the unbelief of sin and not doing the
commandments, and also the unbelief that is present in all of us until we have lived the
Christian life a goodly amount of time.
When I say Á-°live the Christian lifeÁ-?, I do not mean just being a Christian for fifty years. I
mean living according to the commandments, with your eyes always set towards
1
This homily was transcribed and edited from one given at
, on the tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Aug 11/24 2008.