20th
Sunday of Year (A)
(Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans
11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28)
Or, as another eminent translation words it:
God has imprisoned
all in disobedience so that He may be merciful to all.
But where are we today, People of God, when
‘disobedience’ is denied, and sinfulness is not recognized? Jesus came to
the Jewish people proclaiming ‘Repent’, and the word meant something to
those who heard Him as members of God’s Chosen People, trained by God over
thousands of years. However, they were, ultimately, only willing to
understand it in relation to liturgical faults and failings, they would not
accept the fulness of Jesus’ teaching offering them eternal salvation for
acknowledging their failure as sons and daughters of a heavenly Father wanting
their hearts and minds in total love and humble obedience, not merely their
sacrificial offerings of bulls and goats, sheep and oxen.
Today it is
much worse: the word ‘repent’ has no meaning at all with people who have
rejected their Christian heritage and can no longer no longer relate to Him Who
said:
Why do
you call Me good? No one is good, except one. God!
That is why
Jesus did not go around ‘doing good’; doing, that is, His idea of good:
I
was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
In today’s
Gospel event, He did actually cure the woman’s daughter but only after He had
been able to admire His Father’s wisdom and grace behind the woman’s
persistence and humility. Jesus did His Father’s will, did that
only for which He had been sent, the only ‘good’ He knew was His
Father’s good, planned for Him, Jesus, to fulfil for God’s glory and men’s
salvation.
Today, any
and every Tom, Dick and Harry, any and every Jill, Jennifer and Jane, think
they know, and often loudly claim they know, what is good without turning to
God for guidance … for what God is there for the great majority of 21st
century Westerners other than the gods of health, wealth, success, pleasure and
power??
Scripture
tells us (Romans 5:12) that suffering and death came into our lives through
sin:
Just as sin came into the world through one man,
and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.
Jesus, as
the Saviour sent by His all Holy, Wise, and Loving Father, came to destroy sin,
the root of all human suffering, for all who would be willing to give
their lives into His hands, to walk along His ways through their earthly life
by the power of His most Holy Spirit so as to be made worthy children of God,
able to live in eternal life as members of the family of Him Who is the Father
of all.
The aim of
‘do-gooders’ (meant neither mockingly nor contemptuously) in our world today is
to try to combat only suffering and death; and yet all of them know as
professionals or experienced practitioners, that no ailment, disease, no
suffering of any sort, let alone today’s previously unheard-of ailments, can be
tackled without knowledge and deep understanding of their cause or causes.
Sadly, the
great majority of the learned and leaders in today’s society are too proud to
turn to God for their own healing from sin and consequently are
incapable of truly relieving mankind’s ever-increasing -- both in threat and in
number -- sufferings, anxieties, and tragedies.
The
Canaanite woman turned to Jesus in her desperation; none in her little world
were able to give her demonized daughter any help. She had heard of Jesus
being described as Son of David, words that meant nothing to her but obviously
meant much to those Jews she knew who spoke thus of Jesus. There was no
other to whom she could turn, so, turn she did to Him Who ignored her, to Him
Whose disciples tried to send her away, to get rid of her. Ultimately it
was those very disciples themselves who turned to their Lord asking Him
urgently:
Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.
Jesus had
not changed since His earlier words, but the woman had changed: still
humbled by her need, and still persistent in her love for her dear daughter,
but somehow as she pushed closer towards Jesus and began to cry directly to Him
Personally saying:
Lord, help me!
She found
herself no longer troubled by those disciples and began to feel a certain
measure of confidence and hope, for His words though uncompromising,
somehow provoked her to hope, they did not crush her down into yet
greater despair. He said:
It
is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs!
She
remained humble (something beyond modern self-righteousness!!) but now
strangely more confident, and somehow at peace, because she felt she now knew
something about Him she was facing, a majestic Man indeed, but humble; yes, a
humble Man familiar with the peasant’s table and the family’s dogs:
She said, “Please (notice, she is
still humble!!), Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from
the table of their masters.”
The
self-righteous modern turners-away-from-Jesus-and-His-Church should hear that
Canaanite woman with shame and tears, for she had heard the silent voice of the
Father Who calls to Jesus, and having learned from Him was blessed to find
Jesus turning to her and addressing her directly:
“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done
for you as you wish.” And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.
Dear People
of God, what can bring our western spiritual wilderness back to life with the
refreshing waters of the Spirit of Jesus? Will it require the suffering,
agony, and ‘despair’ of the Canaanite woman, or will the smouldering coals of
former faith help some to remember that:
God has delivered all to disobedience that He might have mercy on all.
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