Gerasene Demoniac

“Keep to yourself; do not come near me, for I am too holy for you” (Isaiah 65:5). This is the ‘holier than thou’ attitude that the prophet Isaiah spoke against in our second reading today. For the Hebrew prophets this attitude smacked of hypocrisy. Worshiping out of a belief that we are better than everyone else is not true worship but a selfish enterprise. Yet so much of our lives is geared towards giving us a sense of superiority over our neighbours. We see this in the consumerist sense “buy this car and be the envy of your friends,” “wear this dress and be the envy of your colleagues” etc. but also in how competitive our society has become, “look how hard working and productive I am,” “look how much money I have.”