This is one of those challenging Gospel passages. So much can be said, and so much can be misunderstood. I found myself inspired by a quote from St. Thomas Merton from Word on Fire Gospels which opened my eyes to some of the nuances of this Gospel story. I came away so appreciative of the Canaanite woman and her humble faith.
“The most important thing in prayer is that we present ourselves as we are before God as he is. This cannot be done without a generous effort of recollection and self-searching. But if we are sincere, our prayer will never be fruitless. Our sincerity itself establishes an instant contact with the God of all truth” (St. Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island).
In our Gospel story, Jesus is approached by a Canaanite woman. She begs Him to heal her daughter. She does not try to deny who she is or where she comes from. She doesn’t make any attempts at bargaining due to her heritage, but she is persistent and undeterred in her plea. Even after Jesus seems to reject her because she is a Canaanite while He is a Jew, she never claims to be more than who she is. In radical humility, she offers Jesus her very identity as a second-class citizen in the eyes of the Jewish people.
Her humility is the lens through which she was able to see Jesus with eyes of faith. Where others saw Jesus as a Jew who came to speak to the Jews (see the apostles’ reactions to her pleas), this brave, bold, and humble woman recognized the universality of Jesus. Jesus came for the salvation of the whole world, not just the Jewish people. While the Jewish people do have a special place in the work of salvation, no group of people is excluded from the gifts Jesus came to give.
There is so much we can learn from the Canaanite woman. First, we need to take honest stock in who we are before our Lord. We are sinners, and it was while we were still in sin that God sent us His only Son. Second, we have to acknowledge that we do not set the limitations for who Jesus helps, who He loves, or who He saves. When we begin to determine boundaries, when we judge who is in and who is out, when we withhold forgiveness, we are setting ourselves outside of where we have been designed to be. God is God, we are not.
The Canaanite woman shows us how to humbly acknowledge that without Jesus, we can’t accomplish a whole lot. But, when we seek Him, when we present our needs before Him from a place of humility and trust, we give Him the space to work miracles in our lives.
Daily Reading
Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 Ez 1:2-5, 24-28c On the fifth day of the fourth month of the fifth year,that is, of King Jehoiachin’s exile,The word of the LORD came to the priest…
Saint of the Day
Saint Euplius
Saint Euplius is venerated as a martyr and saint by the Catholic Church. With Saint Agatha, he is a co-patron of Catania in Sicily.
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