INTRODUCTION
The Liturgy of the Word on this 20th Sunday Year A celebrates God’s eternal desire that all men be brought to salvation. Each of the readings speaks of the expansive and universal nature of the “Kingdom of God,” in contrast with the theory that salvation was offered first to the Jews and through them alone to the rest of the world. Although by virtue of the historicity of divine revelation, God set the Hebrew people apart as the first to receive the salvific promise, but this was misunderstood and often spoken about in the language of monopoly. God’s intent is that through Israel all nations on earth will come to share in his plan for salvation. God’s salvation has no limit. It does not know a particular people or religion. This is based on the fact that we are all creatures of the One and the same God. We are invited today to renew our commitment in the quest for salvation but at the same time break away from the erroneous mentality that tends to monopolize God and the salvation which is a free gift to all through Jesus Christ His Son.
FIRST READING: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7
The third part of the book of the prophet Isaiah (chapters 56-66), tells of the story of the Jewish returnees from the Babylonian exile. But today’s message is addressed primarily to those Jews who decided to stay back in Babylon even after the end of their captivity.These got married to foreigners and became part of their history. But they were entangled into confusion whether their present state is a separation from the God of Israel or not especially as they were considered by their fellow Jews as impure and outside the Covenant because of their marriage with foreigners.Thus, the prophesy is meant to affirm that God’s concern for the glory of the house of Israel does not stop him from opening the way of redemption to those outside the Covenant as long as they acknowledge him as God and accept his commandments. It declares, “The foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh, ministering to Him, loving the name of Yahweh and becoming His servants . . . these I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer . . . for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” This was indeed a consoling message especially to these Jews who were living in a pagan territory that God desires to unite to himself the people of other nations and not only the descendants of Abraham. It is an inclusivist message of the universality of God’s salvation. The symbol of uniting all people together is expressed in the prophetic accent to admitting all into God’s Temple-a house of prayer. Although the Gentiles were given a place in the partitioning of the Temple:
1. The outer court called the court of the Gentiles, though restricted from trespassing,
2. The court of women,
3. The Israel court, which is the court of men,
4. The court of priest and the Holy of Holies meant only for the High Priest,
but then the prophesy is meant to signal God’s intent to break down the barriers that kept the Gentiles away in the far reaches of the Temple, giving special privileges to the Jews and denying them to the Gentiles.
SECOND READING: Romans 11:13-15, 29-32
In Romans 9 – 11, Paul asks how God could apparently go back on His promise to Abraham that Abraham’s descendants would always be God’s chosen people, now that those descendants had rejected Jesus. Paul answers his own question by explaining that God’s plan all along had allowed for the Jews’ rejection of Jesus, so that the few Jews who accepted Jesus and went out to preach the Good News, like himself, would be forced to turn to the Gentiles and bring them into the New Covenant. But then this expectation of Paul did not come to fruition as he desired. He was often frustrated by the slow pace of Jewish conversions and adherence to the message and coupled with the physical hostility they meted on him and his companions by his Jewish brethren. Paul saw these frustrations and rejections as an opportunity to turn towards the Gentiles so that by preaching the Good News to them the Jews would become jealous and accept Jesus because for the Jews the Gentiles do not need to be brought to the faith since they were meant to be outside the Covenant. But in this way, Paul revealed God’s secret plan which is to invite all people into the one Covenant in Christ Jesus. By the statement, “Their rejection is the reconciliation of the world,” Paul meant that the Jews’ rejection of Jesus allowed the world (the pagans, the Gentiles), to be reconciled to God. The failure of Paul to make much impact among his Jewish brethren should be a strong message for us. We must learn to accept hard moments in our own lives especially when it concerns our loved ones who refuse what we regard as advantageous to them. And like the apostle too, we shouldn’t give up, rather let our path be guided by a living hope that situations will surely turn around for good at God’s own time.
GOSPEL: Matthew 15:21-28
1. Our prayers must convince God that we truly have faith. Though miracles can take place without our contributions, but the miracle that leads to authentic conversion and positive perception and trust in God is that which is obtained through persistent prayer with Faith.
2. God answers prayers anywhere, anytime and from any person that recognises Him as indispensable in his or her life.
These premises are meant to introduce us to the miracle story told by Matthew in today’s gospel healing. It is the second and the last time Matthew records a healing miracle of Jesus on a pagan territory. The first miracle is that of a Centurion’s servant at Capernaum (Mt 8:10-12) and today we have the deliverance of the daughter of this Canaanite woman from her demonic attack.
If pilgrimage is a journey to a foreign land in which the individual tends to search for meaning about his or her life or even for a higher good which often leads to personal transformation, then we can describe the journey of Jesus today into the region of Tire and Sidon as a pilgrimage. Matthew did not say ‘and Jesus arrived towards Tire and Sidon’, rather that ‘He departed from there (from the soil of Israel) and withdrew to the district of Tire and Sidon. It was a purposeful visit to a pagan soil that saw to his encounter with this Canaanite woman of the Syro-phoenician race. The Canaanites were the ancestral staunch enemies of the Jews and were considered by the latter as idolaters and unclean. Their enmity dates back to the days of the wandering of the Israelites in the desert after their liberation from Egypt. In order to possess the land of Canaan, they had to engage the inhabitants in several battles and victories (Nb 21; Jgs 1:1-2:9; Judth 5:16-18).
Today, Jesus visits the pagan territory not to wage battle like the old Israel but to bring joy. From the ongoing of the dialogue between Jesus and the woman we discover that Matthew was very stylistic in representing Him and his Apostles with an ege-long Jewish conception and mentality about the pagans. First it was the Apostles who reacted harshly by telling Jesus to send such a poor and helpless woman away even after hearing her cry for mercy: “Have Mercy on me o Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon”. Secondly, Matthew presents the limit of Jesus’s mission to be within the soil of Israel. He went ahead to use the term “dog” which is not strange as regards to how the Gentiles were viewed (unclean) by the Jewish counterparts.
However, Matthew projects the power of the faith of the woman as a background response to any form of stereotype against the pagans. She succeeded in turning Jesus’ visit to the land from an ordinary visit to a pilgrimage in which Jesus discovered a living faith outside the territory of Israel. She made him to understand that even though dogs might not be qualified to be given the children’s bread. In other words, even though she might not be qualified to share from the table of grace, she would definitely share from the floor of grace (the remnant) from the same God of grace. This response closed the dialogue and opened a new page in the life of the woman. The healing of her daughter became a bridge to her initiation into a new faith. It is good to note clearly that what made this woman to win the ticket of miracle is not simply her persistence but the ‘howness’ of the persistence. We might have been asking God for particular graces for many years and He seems to be quiet over our situations. This is not enough. The question is, how have we been praying? Is our faith enough to convince God?
READING THE GOSPEL IN ITS CONTEXT
In order to understand the message of Matthew today it is necessary to know that he was addressing the gospel to his fellow Jewish converts who despite their conversion to Christianity were still stuck to the belief as the chosen people and the rest of the people as Gentiles. Matthew presents this gospel to affirm the universality of salvation insisting that Jesus is for the whole human race and not only to the house of Israel. The evangelist applied the convincing faith of the woman to counter the Jewish monopoly of salvation; in other words faith also grows somewhere else. The expression, “I am sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel is Matthew’s way of presenting Jesus told in a Jewish tonality which portrays their limited conception of the salvation of the Messiah.
He presents the woman from the onset as a woman of faith because she acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah.The appellation “Son of David” is an authentic affirmation of the Messianic identity of Christ, since the Messiah was only promised to the house of David.
Secondly, the expression, “have mercy on me” goes beyond a simple dependency on the charity of the other. It places accent on the divinity of Christ. In fact the woman is presented as an image of a humanity once outside grace but now having acknowledged her God begs for his mercy. It was a cry of a man of misery whose liberation depends exclusively on his God.
LIFE MESSAGE
1. GOD SALVATION IS INCLUSIVE
Salvation is an initiative of God, and He offers this salvation to all. Matthew makes us to understand that Jesus made this move beyond the territory of the Israelites. There He saw a soul in need of salvation. Our God does not say no to the needs of his people. He comes to the aid of all who are wounded not counting on places, distances and persons.
Our Church should not claim monopoly of salvation. It is extended to all categories of people: the outsider who is not a member of our Church, the public sinner whom the human society abhors and that criminal that we often think deserves nothing good. God cares for all and saves all who turn to him because all belong to him.
2. WE NEED TO CONVINCE GOD IN FAITH
Our God sees. He is fully aware of our sufferings and challenges. And sometimes our cry for mercy does not suffice to obtain a desired result. Jesus was neither carried away by the name “Son of David” nor was He lured immediately by the plea “have mercy on me”. He engaged the woman on a long conversation and even tried to push her to discouragement, but she stood her ground. It is a false belief and deception to think that our identity as Christians is a passport to freedom from problems or that our perseverance in prayer enough to win God’s favour. Jesus tells us that we must be ‘convinced of our perseverance’ itself. We must wonder why sometimes the more we pray the more our situations grow worse. Let us think about this woman and the stress she passed through prayer yet she was not discouraged. In here perseverance she was convinced that the one standing before her had the solution she was seeking for, and she finally succeeded in bending Jesus to her need.
It is not enough to persevere. We must be convinced of our perseverance.
3. WE NEED TO BREAK THE WALLS OF SEPARATION
Very often we set up walls which separate us from God and from one another. Today’s Gospel reminds us that God’s love and mercy are extended to all who call on him in Faith and trust, no matter who they are. In other words, God’s care extends beyond the boundaries of race and nation to the hearts of all who live. Jesus moved into Tire and Sidon and there He encountered a woman who came from a race in enmity with the Jews. This tells us that our mentality serves nothing and our social and cultural differences is useless when human need is at stake. We need to look at people as persons-concrete individuals and not as a faceless people. This is only possible when we wear the lens of love and not the lens of cultural background and religious inclinations. There are a lot of good to be discovered outside our territory. Yes we must approach the district of ‘Tire and Sidon’ so that our limited and ‘full of the self’ superior mentality will receive a new light. Let us not sit at our little zones to think that the world begins and ends around us. This often leads us to think that we are ‘children while others are dogs’. It is therefore fitting that we should pray today so that the walls which our pride, intolerance, fear, and prejudice have raised, may crumble, giving way to a universal brotherhood.
PRAYER
God the Creator of heaven and earth and all that they contain, we thank you for your generous love which opens the way of salvation to all human race. Help us today and always as we respond to your invitation to salvation and also to work towards the promotion of the salvation of our brothers and sisters especially those who do not acknowledge you in their lives and those who do not share the same faith with us, so that at the end all may break away from the walls of division and come to the eternal home where there will be only one Shepherd and one sheepfold. Amen.
PAX VOBIS!
