St. John Chrysostom Russian Orthodox Church - House Springs (St. Louis Area), Missouri

Why did the Lord Jesus send the evil spirits into the swine? He could have sent them into the trees or the rocks, so why particularly into the swine? Not in order to do what the demons asked, but in order to teach men. Where there are swine, there is uncleanness, and the impure spirits love uncleanness; where it does not exist, they create it by force. Where is a little, they very quickly add to it, and soon make that little into much. When they settle within the purest man, they very quickly amass swinish impurity within him. By the swine’s rushing downhill and drowning in the sea, the Lord wanted to teach us how weak a defense voracity and gluttony are against diabolic powers, and to remind us about fasting. What do voracity and gluttony have to do with the swine? See how quickly the demonic power overcame them and drove them to destruction! So it is with voracious and gluttonous men, who think that they can, by gluttony, build up their strength. They do not, however, increase their strength in this way, but rather their weakness, both physical and spiritual.

We see here an even clearer teaching: how terrible the demons’ power is when God does not hold it in check. The demons, who had been in only two men, overcame, and drowned in a few moments, about two thousand pigs. But God held them there until Christ came—to show His power and authority over them; and then He let them go—to show the power of the demons. Were God to have allowed it, the demons would, in a few moments, have done with all men on earth as they did with the swine. But God loves mankind, and His limitless love holds us in life and protects us from our fiercest and most terrible foes.