The gospel passage today provides an inadvertent comical interlude. Jesus' power over the demons was not the joke, but sending the demons into the swine who went rushing off a cliff into the sea was a play on sentiment. You see, Jews have nothing to do with pigs – they are unclean animals – so this whole dismissal of the demons was like a double-driving home of the point: Jesus came to fulfill the law, but not to abolish it, although he would change some antiquated dietary restrictions.
Jesus can deal with our demons as well: the ones that seems to flit and fly around us from time to time and the more prominent ones that make their presence felt in the "affairs of the world." But what we need as individuals, and as a society is faith that he can do it! And like in the gospel passage, the demons themselves will ask to be dismissed in the present of our light and our true and our faith, as they did in Jesus' presence!
When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him.
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