Here's another unpreached homily...but I was ready, more or less, just in case. That's something I've learned to do over the years: always be ready to preach. Anyway, it focuses on one of my favorite healings, so well described by Matthew, so I decided to share my imperfect thoughts with you all.
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Readings: Is 56:1, 6-7; Ps 67; Rom 11:13-15, 29-32; Mt 15:21-28
It would be easy to overlook this
brief encounter depicted in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew. It would be
easier still to discount its importance. After all, Jesus cured hundreds,
probably thousands, during His public ministry. What makes this one so special?
But this encounter with the Lord
was special because it was different…very different. First of all, it took
place in the region of Tyre and Sidon, outside the land of Israel. And the
woman he meets there is a Canaanite, a non-Jew, a pagan. Jesus, Matthew tells
us, is withdrawing from Israel, and she is coming out of her own land,
searching for what? It appears they are searching for each other, a meeting the
Father has scheduled. And we know that Jesus never misses an encounter at the
precise time and place arranged by the Father.
We can also see what the disciples
thought of her: "Send her away,
for she keeps calling out after us." Yes, the simple word,
“Canaan,” evokes everything contrary to Jewish faith and tradition, everything
they have been taught to despise.
And yet this pagan woman comes to
Jesus, a Jew; and she comes to Him as her Lord and Savior: “Lord, Son of
David…” Yes, each has left something behind to fulfill a deep yearning: Jesus yearning
to save, and the woman’s to be saved. No power on earth can thwart this
encounter.
Are our encounters with Jesus like
this? For Jesus is seeking each one of us you just as He sought the Canaanite
woman. He will gladly leave the holy places; He will enter into the unholy land
of our sinfulness, in search of lost sheep.
But like the woman, we must turn to
Him. And turn to Him she does. Yes, her only business that day was to find Him
and to express her desperate need in the strongest possible terms. And in doing
so she becomes the very embodiment of fervent intercessory prayer.
She screamed out her need, a parent
agonizing over the suffering of her child, a daughter possessed by a demon. Without
knowing it, this earthly mother appeals to the compassion of the heavenly
Father, who understands well the agony of a child’s suffering. Her daughter’s
distress is her distress: “Have pity on me,” she begs. “Lord, help me,” she
pleads, as if she and her daughter are one, as if her daughter’s distress
reverberates through her very being.
She is on a mission; one her daughter
cannot complete. She must become her daughter’s voice, her daughter’s
hands…just as Jesus became the Father, His hands, His feet, His voice, His
Word. Does Jesus recognize in this woman and her attitude a mirror image of His
own mission?
And yet, despite all this, Jesus
responds with silence…the same silence that often greets our own prayer. Does
this mean she should turn away, and just hope for the best? Does it mean she
should address Jesus differently? Did she shout too loudly, or not loudly enough?
Should she have realized, as the
disciples apparently thought, that Jesus was on a greater mission, a mission to
save the world? That He really couldn’t be troubled with one woman’s problems? Was
this saving, this healing of His strictly a Jewish thing? Did all this pass
through her mind?
We can almost picture her, face
flushed, eyes frantic, hands reaching out, pleading, as her mind jumps from one
concern to the next…but she too says nothing, her pain muted by Jesus’ seeming
indifference.
And yet, God’s silence, His silence
in us is one of the choicest works of His grace. Her speculation and worry are no
different from that which we experience when faced with God’s silence. But
eventually, if we stop speculating, stop worrying, and become silent ourselves,
we can come to hear God’s Word in the silence.
The disciples can’t stand it. In
effect they tell Jesus, “For crying out loud. This woman’s driving us nuts. Do
something, will you?”
But Jesus just says, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel." He dismisses them just as He seems to have dismissed her. But this
comment only causes her to plead once more, “Lord, help me.”
Her only solution is to throw
herself at Jesus’ feet and cry for mercy. Although she’s probably never heard a
single line of Scripture, her entire being is intuitively reduced to the cry of
the psalmist: “Let thy mercy come to me
and I will have life.” For she realized that day what St. Bernard realized a
thousand years later, “The torrents of
grace do not flow upward to the heights of pride…but downward into a humble,
low-lying heart.”
Jesus now utters what to our ears
seems a horrible insult: "It is not right
to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."
How can He say such a thing?” we
ask. Where’s the voice of the Good Shepherd? Where’s the Jesus who consoled the
woman of Samaria? Where’s the Savior who died to set all people free?
Well, he's right here, right here
in this encounter. He's the teacher goading the student. He's the coach pushing
the player to give his all. He's the debater throwing down the verbal gauntlet so
the argument can begin, and the truth can be seen by all.
The woman is no fool. She seems to
recognize this. She may have no claim on the inheritance of Israel, but she
still needs God’s promises to be fulfilled in her. And so, she doesn’t
disagree, but in effect declares that Jesus speaks the truth, that she is,
indeed, among the least of His creatures, nothing more than a dog in search of
its master.
We can almost hear her joy as she plays
this trump card on Jesus and realizes what its effect will be. For in her deep
faith, and filled with the Spirit, she knew all along that Jesus would answer
her prayer. After all, how could the Son of God turn her down?
After all, had she wanted to risk
sounding insolent, she could have asked Him what on earth He was doing in pagan
territory to begin with if, as He claimed, He had come only to redeem Jews? Why
indeed had He come to this place, to encounter those in need, if He intended to
do nothing about it?
You see, brothers and sisters, it
is this wonderful woman’s genus to have understood the truth, the divine
secret, that in order truly to win – that is, to be overtaken and sheltered and
saved – she must allow herself to be defeated by Jesus.
She and you and I win only by
submitting to God, by adoring God, and by finding that adoration accepted. The
whole drama is shot through with an indestructible passion of faith, with her
inability to conceive of God in Jesus as anything but an inexhaustible fountain
of mercy.
Yes, it’s all about faith. “Kyrie,”
[Lord] she cries out four times in this brief encounter.
“If you’re indeed Lord,” she seems
to say, “the all-powerful Lord, then you must be the loving Lord of all, of the
high and the low, of the sheep of Israel and the dogs of the pagans. I don’t
care which I am, only that I am with you. If you’re truly the One Son of the
One God, then you’re the Lord of all, then you’re my personal Lord too, and my
rejoicing over it will never end.”
Unlike so many who demand that God serve
them at their table, she has no problem abiding on the floor under His table.
She has no problem with crumbs, glorious crumbs from that table, heavenly
crumbs falling from the hands of Jesus Himself.
For she knows that wherever Jesus
is, there is abundance; that wherever sin is, God’s compassion ensures that
grace is there too, superabundantly. Just as we know that here, at this very
altar, at the Eucharistic table, Christ’s mercy will forever be raining those
crumbs of life.
"You’ve got great faith,
woman," he says, "You’ve got remarkable faith!"
Won't it be wonderful when he says
the same thing to you and to me?
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