My Dear People,

Today’s Gospel reading is of a Gentile woman—and not any Gentile woman, but a descendent of the Canaanites, about whom the Old Covenant as summarized in Deuteronomy had nothing good to say at all (Deut. 20:16-18); yet, she finds salvation through Jesus.

Many were troubled by the Lord’s apparently harsh way of initially dealing with this woman. Shouldn’t Jesus have immediately offered to heal this poor woman’s daughter?

(We need to remember that the Lord had prophetic insight into the hearts of the people with whom he interacted.) He knew what people were thinking and the state of their heart (Matt 9:4; 12:25; John 2:25; 5:61).

Jesus adapts His way of dealing with people to their individual situations and needs. For example, He doesn’t challenge everyone to sell all that they have and give to the poor (Matt 19:21 and Luke 19:8-10). But, He knew that was what the rich young man needed to do.

So, in the case of this Sunday’s Gospel, we need to understand Jesus’s actions are tailored to the faith of this woman. He sees that she has faith, and he puts her faith to the test to elicit more faith. Untested faith is no faith at all!

Jesus says: “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs” —a painful reminder that the Gentile pagans have no covenantal claim on the God of Israel, no right to call Him to be faithful to His obligations toward them. They have only the ability to throw themselves (ourselves!) on the mercy of God the Creator.

The woman has both tremendous faith and tremendous humility. While not taking insult from Jesus’s words, and humbly acknowledging her lack of any covenant claim on the God of Israel, she asks for unmerited mercy: “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”

Let us recall that Jacob, father of all the sons of Israel, was not the direct heir of God’s covenant but connived and struggled his way in. We recall Rahab’s family and the Gibenonites, both Canaanite groups that should have been wiped out in the conquest of

Jericho, but who tricked and struggled their way into the people of the covenant. We also recall Ruth of the Moabitess and Uriah the Hittite, who renounced their ethnicity and swore oaths to the God of Israel. And we realize throughout salvation history that God has been finding a place in His covenant for people who, in some way or other, didn’t belong there but wanted to be there.

We are also reminded of St Paul’s words:

“For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to the flesh, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God choose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”. (1 Cor. 1:26-28, RSV2CE)

At Mass this Sunday, look around. Are you surrounded by the riffraff of the earth? You may be the riffraff of the earth yourself. “Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23).

What kind of God is this who lets all the riffraff into His covenant?

Thanks be to God; He lets all of us in!

[Source: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year A by Dr. John Bergsma]

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente