“How happy am I to see
myself imperfect and be in need of God’s mercy!” – St. Therese of Lisieux
If you recall, last Sunday’s readings were Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; and the Gospel was Matthew
15:21-28 (USCCB.org). In summary, the
first reading calls us to “Observe what is right” and “Do what is just” by
becoming God’s servants and obeying his commands. The Psalm response is “O God,
let all the nations praise you”, and the Psalm itself calls to God to “have
pity on us and bless us”. In the second reading, Paul tells the Gentiles that
God is merciful and will save them if they turn away from sin and disobedience.
“The gifts of God are irrevocable”, he writes, to accentuate the permanence of
God’s mercy in the face of their wrongdoings. Finally, the Gospel shares the
story of the Canaanite woman who begs Jesus to have mercy on her daughter, who
is possessed by a demon. Jesus does not answer her plea the first time, says
that he cannot help her because she is not an Israelite the second time, and
finally answers her plea the third time by responding, “O woman! Great is your
faith. Let it be done as you wish.”
The
readings that I will focus on this week will be the last two. This past weekend
I visited a parish in New York State. The priest there was an older man, white
haired, his face looking tired and weathered under his thick-rimmed glasses.
His speech was knowing, yet somewhat bored, signifying that he’d been saying
masses for quite some time. When he went to give the homily, I wasn't sure what
to expect, but he kept his words short and sweet, and his ideas really stuck
with me.
What I
absorbed from the homily were the ideas of unexclusiveness and persistent
faith. Throughout Scripture, we constantly see groups of people mentioned.
Israelites, Canaanites, Gentiles, Jews, etc. and often times, especially in the
Old Testament, God acts a certain way towards those people. We sometimes tend
to focus on how prevalent God’s wrath is towards certain groups of people (such
as His flooding of the Earth in order to get rid of the unrighteous in Noah’s
day) which can be frightening. However, when we read the second reading and the
Gospel, both talk about God’s mercy extending out to people who are of all
different backgrounds. In the Gospel reading, the woman who is a Canaanite is
granted mercy by Jesus, even though she was not a Jew. In Romans, Paul speaks
directly to the Gentiles, and delivers a message of hope to them that they may
be redeemed by God’s mercy, even though they're not Jews either. These passages
display the idea of unexclusiveness; that God is so merciful and loving that He
chooses to save all people willing to accept him, not just one chosen race.
Though this is great news, we must be willing to persist, as
the Canaanite woman had when asking Jesus to heal her daughter. Sometime when
we pray, it seems that God isn't listening or isn't there. However, just as in
his first exchange with the woman, Jesus had listened to her plea but hadn't
responded. Although Jesus tells her in another response that he has only come
to save the people of Israel, he really sees how faithful she is when she
persists even after that comment. From this story, we learn that Jesus is
willing to reach out his hand to ALL who ask and persist in faith when they truly
need help and truly believe.
As a call to action, I would like us to focus on the
unexclusive mercy that God sheds on us. No matter who we are, how badly we've
sinned, where we come from, or how discouraged we are, we can be saved by God’s
grace. I pray that we can share this love with ALL of our neighbors, so as to
become more like Christ!
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