Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
O Woman, Great Is Your Faith
The Canaanite woman inspires me. She is persistent. Because she doesn’t belong with the followers of Jesus, even Jesus ignores her, and the disciples ask Jesus to get rid of her. In spite of this rejection and isolation, it is her love for her child that emboldens her to keep asking, to keep pleading—“Have pity on me, Lord! My daughter is tormented.” “Lord, help me!” “Please, Lord!”
Do our prayers these days have anything in common with those of the Canaanite woman? I tend to think that most of us are praying desperately for members of our families. Some are drug addicted or in abusive relationships, some are suffering hatred and exclusion because they are different or don’t belong because of sexual identity. We don’t always know what to do except to plead for mercy.
Besides our personal, family, or community struggles, we are inundated with images of violence and threats of more that come from hatred, fear, bullying, and distrust of the other.
In the Mass, we pray in Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II: “By your Spirit you move human hearts that enemies may speak to each other again, adversaries join hands, and peoples seek to meet together.” Like the Canaanite woman, we are called to be persistent and bold in our begging and pleading for mercy and for change. She desperately wanted the demon to leave her daughter. And Jesus says that her faith was GREAT!
What are the demons occupying us these days? What divisions and separations, exclusions, and isolation separate us from living as disciples of Jesus?
Can we make our houses—the persons we are, the families and homes we live in, the churches we worship in, the communities we live and work in—houses of prayer for all peoples? What is the healing that needs to happen in each of us to allow our human hearts to be reconciled with enemies and adversaries so that we can live in Isaiah’s vision—all people will be welcome on God’s “holy mountain.”
Should we even hesitate to ask God for what we need?