Fr. Gerard Kelly
There are some things that are troubling in the Gospel
story that we have just heard. But there
are also things that encourage us. It
can be good to recognise that the gospel can speak to us at a few different levels.
Perhaps the easiest level to appreciate the gospel is
to note the attitude of the woman who approaches Jesus. She is a woman who is determined to be heard
and to make sure that Jesus understands her needs. But she does this with the greatest respect
for him. She is persistent in calling
out to him. Perhaps another way we could
express this is to say that she keeps knocking at his door, even when there is
no answer. She is convinced that he will
respond to her. In the end Jesus praises
her for her faith. What was her
faith? Faith can be hard to define. In the case of this woman, the best way to
know her faith is to look at how it was demonstrated. She begins by falling at the feet of Jesus
and addressing him as Lord. Here she
shows that she recognises him as someone who comes from God. This gesture is basically one of worshipping
him. In worshipping him she acknowledges
that he is God and that she is depends on him.
This is why her prayer – and that is what it is – is “help me”. She knows that her life and her daughter’s
life depend on Jesus. This tells us
something about faith, namely that faith is always saving faith. This woman has an encounter with Jesus who
saves – saves her and saves her daughter.
There is an important message here for us. We learn something of how our relationship
with God, in Jesus, works. We learn a
number of very profound things about prayer.
One is that before all else, our prayer is an act of worship. We worship Jesus as Lord, as did this
woman. In worshipping him as Lord we
acknowledge his power to transform our lives and our world. We also acknowledge our own neediness and our
dependence on him. We also learn that
prayer is an honest and direct encounter with Jesus. The woman was not afraid to keep going back
to Jesus while ever her need lasted.
Yes, she was respectful, but this did not stop her from speaking in a
forthright manner to him. We can learn
from this that there is nothing that we can’t raise with Jesus in prayer.
This gospel can also speak to us at another level –
one that is a little more difficult to comprehend. We can be troubled by the way Jesus begins
his response. This woman is from foreign
territory. She does not belong to the
People of God. Jesus’ initial response
is to say that his message is not meant for foreigners like this woman; it is
for God’s chosen people, the Jewish people.
Jesus uses the phrase that he was sent to the lost sheep of the House of
Israel. It seems that he only
reluctantly responds to this foreign woman.
Because she was a foreigner, she would have been considered to be an
enemy.
These facts can tell us a few things. One is that Jesus is in a line of prophets
who proclaimed God’s message and called the people of God back to that original
relationship God offered them. God was
never going to revoke that relationship.
In fact he wanted to offer a similar relationship to the whole
world. So, his message goes out from the
Jewish people to the whole world. That
is how all of us have received it. Of
all the people who appear in the gospels, this woman is the person who is most
like us. So this gospel story today
marks an important development in God’s plan.
We learn that his is message for the whole world.
We, then, become part of the new people of God who
continue to take that message to the whole world. The Christian faith is always spreading
out. The most important way that it
spreads is by its attractiveness.
Recently, Pope Francis made the important point that effective Christian
witness is not bombarding people with religious messages. We can bombard Jesus with our prayer, but we
become witnesses of his message by showing to the world that he is concerned
with our doubts, our hopes, our sorrows, our joys, our pain and our needs. To put it simply: he is interested in our
salvation; he saves.
Just as the story of this foreign woman remains in the
Gospel as a witness to us of Jesus’ concern for everyone, so too our own
stories of his saving action can show others that he also cares for them.
