“And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.”
The demons begged Jesus, send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them — the demons' request to enter the pigs rather than be expelled to the abyss (their preferred outcome) reveals their hierarchy of preferences: staying in the region (verse 10), staying in any bodily host (verse 12), anything other than the abyss. The request to enter the pigs is granted not because Jesus approves of the outcome but because the ultimate result — the pigs' destruction and the man's liberation — serves the purpose of the exorcism. The demons get what they ask for and immediately lose what they entered.
Church Fathers on Mark 5:12
Those who were in the ship enquired among themselves, 'What manner of man is this?' and now it is made known Who He is by the testimony of His enemies. For the demoniac came up confessing that He was the Son of God. Proceeding to which circumstance the Evangelist says, 'And they came over unto the other side, &c.'
Geraza is a noted town of Arabia, across the Jordan, near mount Galaad, which the tribe of Manasseh held, not far from the lake of Tiberias, into which the swine were precipitated.
Though Matthew says that there were two, Mark and Luke mention one, that you may understand that one of them was a more illustrious person, concerning whose state that country was much afflicted.
Read all 23 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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