“O
woman, great is your faith!”
The
readings for today - those from Isaiah, from Paul’s letter to the
Romans, and from Matthew’s Gospel, all center on the fact that it is in
God’s nature to include rather that to exclude people from His care and
from His Presence. God has many ways of doing this, through trials,
discipline, and through our prayers. Nonetheless, we are all to be
God’s people and nothing on God’s part will separate us from the love
of God if that is what we desire. And yet that is the crux of the
problem, our desire. It is our call from God to desire God’s care,
God’s love, and thus God’s presence. But in this we face many
obstacles, not from God but from ourselves; from the milieu we choose
to live our lives, to the people and things we fill our lives with, to
our inner disposition and pursuits as we seek to both survive and make
our mark in this life. Much of the time we see ourselves as victims of
the circumstances that surround us, and we buy into the lie that fate,
the roll of the dice, is what determines the quality of our life. If
things don’t go our way, we say that we are unlucky and there’s nothing
we can do about it. Even prayer can be for us just another roll of the
dice. We say: we can pray - it can’t hurt - let’s see what happens.
This process is called fatalism - the attitude that makes us live as
passive victims of exterior circumstances beyond our control. Now the
opposite of this fatalism is faith. Faith is the deep trust that God’s
love is stronger than all the anonymous powers of the world and can
transform us from victims of darkness to servants of light..
Let’s look at today’s
gospel passage about the Canaanite woman to see how this might work for
us. The woman was in great need because of her daughter and the nearby
presence of Jesus was an opportunity for her to have her needs met. She
begins with the urgent request, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!
My daughter is tormented by a demon.” First of all, she does know a
thing or two about Jesus even though they are foreigners to each other
- he a Jew and she a Canaanite. In her address, she exalts Jesus plus
identifies him as the Messiah, the Christ, of God from whom she needs a
great favor. Since Jesus is thus directly from God, she is very
confident he can bring the cure she needs for her daughter. “But Jesus
did not say a word in answer to her.”
Doesn’t that sometime happen to us - we have an urgent request of God
and all we seem to receive is silence. How many times have we been
discouraged by this and just given up? - just assumed that an answer is
not in the cards for us and we go away once again a victim of fate. But
apparently the silence of Jesus did not dissuade this woman. She
persisted in her petition so that finally Jesus’ disciples said to him,
“send her away.” In other words, grant her request so she will
quit bugging us. If Jesus had done that wouldn’t everyone have been
happy? The woman would have won through her persistence and peace and
quiet would come to the disciples. But Jesus wouldn’t have been happy;
he had something else in mind. Jesus is a teacher and he had an
important lesson to convey. What could that be? So instead of granting
the woman’s request then and there, he makes the remark, “I was sent
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In other words - you
are an outsider, you are not part of me and my people - I really can’t
help you. This must have been very disheartening; but instead of giving
up, the woman went deeper into humility and, “did him homage, saying,
“Lord, help me.” Whose heart wouldn’t have been moved by such a
petition yet it seems that Jesus wants to go even deeper, to really get
the attention of all who read and ponder this exchange between a person
in need and Jesus. Jesus answers her request with a harsh statement
that reflects the profound division between the Jews and gentiles, “it
is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the
dogs.”
At this point, we may agree within ourselves that indeed because of the
separation between me and God, I don’t deserve God’s love or
providence. I should just give up even thinking that God will take me
into His love and abandon this God project as a failure. But the whole
point of this exchange is that we must not give up no matter what we
judge ourselves to be. Because God’s love is boundless and there is a
very good reason that we are put through the trials that we are called
to endure and overcome. We need to grow into the conviction that God
has already bridged the gap between us - we have a way to connect with
God and that way is a person, Jesus. Through her next response the
woman shows that she understands this - there is nothing that will make
her let go of Jesus - not even a seeming insult from him. So she finds
the way to come to Jesus saying, “please Lord, for even the dogs eat
the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” She seems to be
saying that if Jesus wants her to become a dog, which is an insulting
state for any Semite person, then she will do so. Sometimes we too are
dramatically called to let go of our pride in our relationships with
one another in order to receive the healing that that relationship so
desperately needs. The motivation for doing something like this is
faith and trust in the other person. That has to be there. This is
evidenced in the exchange between the woman and Jesus. Because when she
gives her response, she hears from Jesus the greatest compliment
possible, “O woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you
wish.”
As we ponder this
episode, we realize that this is not just a story of one woman’s
triumph over Jesus to get what she wants. It is a lesson in the reasons
why God wants us to pray, why God wants us to come to him in prayer.
God wants that so that He can open us up to all that he has created us
to be. On the face of it, we don’t have to petition God for our needs;
God already knows what those are. And being God who loves us
unconditionally, He could meet all our needs without our asking. But
that happens only in heaven for heaven is the state of being in the
direct presence of God, hence there is no need for prayers, just praise
and gratitude. Since we are not in heaven, we do need to pray in order
to grow into that state of grace where only faith rules our earthly
lives; where the love of God breaks in upon us; and we cease being
passive victims of fate, and where prayer is not just another roll of
the dice!