The Church gives us a very powerful message in today's gospel: don't give up in prayer. A Canaanite woman, although a pagan, asks Jesus to heal her daughter, who is tormented by a demon. At first he refuses:
I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. She persists, as Pope Benedict tells us, even when she received an answer that would seem to have extinguished any hope:
It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. Jesus was struck with admiration, he continues, for an answer of such great faith and said to her:
Be it done for you as you desire.
 |
The Canaanite Woman
Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry (1412-1416) |
Dear friends, we too are called to grow in faith, to open ourselves in order to welcome God’s gift freely, to have trust and also to cry to Jesus “give us faith, help us to find the way!” This is the way that Jesus made his disciples take, as well as the Canaanite woman and men and women of every epoch and nation and each one of us.
Faith opens us to knowing and welcoming the real identity of Jesus, his newness and oneness, his word, as a source of life, in order to live a personal relationship with him. Knowledge of the faith grows, it grows with the desire to find the way and in the end it is a gift of God who does not reveal himself to us as an abstract thing without a face or a name, because faith responds to a Person who wants to enter into a relationship of deep love with us and to involve our whole life.
For this reason our heart must undergo the experience of conversion every day, every day it must see us changing from people withdrawn into themselves to people who are open to God’s action, spiritual people (cf. 1 Cor 2:13-14), who let themselves be called into question by the Lord’s word and open their life to his Love.
No comments:
Post a Comment