Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 21:33-43

Some of you older people might remember how milk used to be delivered to one’s porch by a milkman. What you may not know is that the same was done, on a more limited basis, with coca cola. When I was about six one of our neighbors would get a case of coca cola in the classic bottles every week. My friend Rickey and I decided to steal a couple of bottles because it was there, I guess. I’m in good company, by the way, because Saint Augustine confessed to something similar. Neither of us had access to a bottle opener, so we simply smashed the neck of the bottles with a rock before we drank the coke. As far as I know we didn’t swallow any glass. Anyway, having had success with our plan, we decided to do it again. The next time we raided the coca cola, the back porch door opened and the owner came out and -- well, you can guess, the next few days were not pleasant.

I bring this up because the parable we just heard bothers me. Sure, we can look at it and see a reflection of salvation history -- God kept sending his messengers to the Jewish people, and they didn’t pay attention, then he sent Jesus, and they killed him, and so God gave his favor over to the gentiles and took it away from the Jews. The problem with this, in my mind, is that Jesus is talking to the chief priests and the elders, not the Jewish people. And certainly even they could say that they aren’t responsible for the sins of their ancestors any more than I am responsible for anything any of my ancestors did.

What bothers me about this story is that the behavior of the tenants is really hard to explain. Why on earth did they think there wouldn’t be retaliation of some sort for their actions? It’s so clear that even the chief priests and the scribes saw the point: “he will put those men to a wretched death”, they say.

And that’s where the parable speaks to me. There is a gap between what I know is right and how I actually live. It’s not a large gap, I hope, but it’s noticeable; and it’s the constant theme of my confessions. I don’t commit new sins, just repeat old ones. I get up every morning and think about all the things I have to do that day. I go to bed every evening knowing that not only did I not do them, but I could have. I wasted time. I consider my friends and family members and think maybe I should drop them a note or send an email or give them a call. It’s so easy nowadays. When I was in college in Washington D.C; to speak to my parents cost real money -- long distance calls were more expensive the longer the distance. I could send letters, but that wasn’t quite the same. Today you can not only speak to your friends on the other side of the country, but you can see them -- and all for nothing. And yet I don’t do what I know I should. I should fast once in a while. But I don’t; I like to eat and there are very few things I don’t like. Even going on a diet to lose a little weight is a burden. And yet fasting is something Christians are supposed to do, along with prayer. My almsgiving is probably alright because my wife takes care of that. If God asked me whether I was concerned about the poor, I would hope that God would notice that the money she gives to charity is really my money. I almsgive by proxy.

And if we think Jesus is talking about the various messengers of God that were rejected by the Jews, what parts of their message were rejected? God called his people to trust in him -- they didn’t, they wanted a king; and when they got a king, that didn’t work out so well. God called his people to repent -- to change their ways, not in a painful way, but to live a new way which involved looking after the widow and the orphan, and being attentive to the needs of your neighbor. And the loving father wanted his children to learn from him, to put him first in their lives. But they chose other Gods, just as we do. Yes, we choose other gods. And when we do so, we become addicted. Not just to drugs, or alcohol or gambling or pornography,. We become addicted to the internet, to television, to shopping, to watching sports-- so many things fill up our days and keep us from doing what God has made it clear we should be doing.

And how does that tie into the parable Jesus gives us today? The tenants acted as though there would be no retaliation for what they were doing -- stealing from the vineyard owner, and beating and killing his emissaries, even his son. And when I think about my life, and believe me, I’m not trying to be all humble about everything -- I know that someday there will be a reckoning. I’ll have to answer, not for the bad things I’ve done, which aren’t a lot, but for the good things I failed to do, for the difference between what could have been and what actually was. I’m not alone in this. The great saints had the same problem. They were all aware that as good as they were, they could do better.

What will you do when the vineyard owner comes and asks for his share of the crop? Will there be anything to share?

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 20:1-16a

Just before Jesus gave his followers this parable, Peter had asked him, “Lord, we have given up everything and followed you.  What will be there for us?” And Jesus then promises that they will sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel.  And he promises that anyone who has given up family, children or lands for his sake will receive a hundredfold, and eternal life besides.”  And then Jesus tells this troubling parable.

I suspect most of us can remember a time in our lives when we were acutely aware of injustice, especially towards ourselves.  In the games I played with neighbor kids the words ``No fair” were flung about with abandon.  When a particularly good pie or cake was served after supper, my sister would say, “why did you give him the biggest?”  Sometimes I’d say that about her piece.  And the difference in size was usually something only a microscope could detect.  I’ve been asked more than once by a child or a grandchild, “Who is your favorite?” or words to that effect.  The last time I was asked this I told the grandchild that my favorite was our cat, Leo.

And that’s why this is such an interesting parable.  I think everyone feels that the vineyard owner was unfair, even though he gives a perfectly good answer to the question of fairness -- Did you not agree to a day’s wage?   And am I not free to do what I wish with my own money?  I wonder how things will go tomorrow when all those workers assemble to be selected for work.  I wonder if a few fights broke out.  

And when we feel that sense of unfairness, that’s exactly what Jesus wants us to feel, I think.  Because you may remember a few weeks ago when he told Peter “Get behind me, Satan!” he followed that with the words, “you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  And this parable is really telling us something about how God thinks.    

So why should we know how God thinks?  The reason is simple.  We are made in the image and likeness of God, but because of original sin, that image is tarnished.  Before Adam and Eve sinned, we have one statement made by Adam: “At last this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” he exclaims upon seeing Eve.  Notice that Adam instantly recognizes that Eve and he are in some sense one.  And God of course proclaims, “For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”  Adam is thinking as God thinks.  But when Adam and Eve sinned, it’s obvious from reading Genesis, that they were thinking as human beings think.  “The woman made me do it,” said Adam, when God confronted him.  “The serpent told me to do it,” said Eve.  This parable of Jesus challenges us to think as God thinks.

The key here is that the vineyard owner agrees to pay the usual daily wage.  Soldiers in the Roman army received the usual daily wage, which was a denarius.  This was supposed to take care of the needs of the person for one day, with a little left over.  And that was topmost on the mind of the vineyard owner, who was thinking as God thinks.  God created a world where there is enough for everyone, with a little left over.  He turned the world over to us to see that every person receives what he or she needs not just to exist, but to live.  Our freedom as human beings depends on having enough; then we have true freedom, the power to choose what is good.  We not only need bodily goods -- food, clothing, and so forth; but intellectual goods -- education; and spiritual goods -- the training in virtue, the opportunity to enter into a relationship with Jesus.  And all of that is available to every human being on earth, if only we have the will to do it.  

When we think as human beings, our first priority is to see that we have not just enough, but more than enough, and if we see someone else with more than enough, we are suspicious and sometimes envious.  Because there is only so much pie to share.  

When we think as God thinks, we recognize that each of us human beings is entitled to enough of the things God gives us to live fully human lives, and it hurts us to see that this is far from the case in our world.  And with God’s grace, we try to do something about it. 

It may take a lifetime to become like the vineyard owner.  I think of Mother Theresa who spent her life giving away what she had gotten, by literally begging; she knew there was enough pie for everyone; she thought as God did.  There was a priest in Buffalo who left as his legacy a beautiful church, a large school and a hospital, to serve the people of Lackawanna.  Father Baker would simply begin his projects trusting that the resources needed would come -- and they always did.  Father Baker thought as God did.  

So, as we meditate today on the words of Jesus, let us pray that we will learn to think as God does.

 

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:21-25

There are people that have a hard time with forgiveness; I know, because I’m one of them.  Oh, I don’t do anything and I’m pleasant to the person I haven’t forgiven, but it’s like a reflex -- when I see or hear or think about the person I haven’t forgiven, I feel a certain anxiety and then I’m ashamed of myself, but the emotion associated with the person doesn't go away -- that’s a grudge I’m talking about.  And a grudge is there when you spontaneously play the tape in your head of what happened that caused the grudge.  Psychologists say that holding grudges is genetic.  I do know that my mother and her brothers could really hold grudges, whereas my father and his parents weren’t that way.  

This parable that Jesus gives us today is, much like most of his parables, something that you can hold up and learn from by going over and over it , chewing on it, meditating on it.  The first thing is that Peter is asking about a brother.  Now scholars think Peter is talking about not just anybody, but someone who is a member of the inner circle, a friend.  One of the purposes for which Matthew wrote his gospel is to use Jesus’ life and sayings to reflect upon how the church should conduct business. You may remember last Sunday when he told us how to deal with a brother who is a sinner.  Today is more of the same.  Peter, by the way, is being generous because the rabbinical opinion was that you had to forgive your brother three times, then all bets were off.  

So Jesus says, in effect, not seven times, but so many times you can’t count it.  That’s what seventy-seven means.  Seven is the number of completeness.  And then he tells this parable.  The debtor owed the king a huge amount, it says.  In other translations, he owed ten thousand talents.  A talent was worth fifteen years of labor.  Ten thousand is the largest number in the language of that time.  And when the debtor asks for mercy and says that he will pay it back if given time, the king doesn’t say, “ok, I’ll be patient”, but says instead, “Forget it, you don’t owe me anything.”  Isn’t that interesting?  Obviously, it’s not hard to see that this is the way the Father sees us -- he forgives us over and over again, because we can’t pay our debt of sin, and Jesus has paid it.  

Now think of the servant.  I can’t help but feel that he walked out of there not believing in his good fortune.  He was dancing on air and couldn't wait to tell his wife.  Now I sort of relate to this man.  There have been a couple of times in my life when I've loaned someone money and they have been very slow to return it.  I remember in college I loaned a small sum to a friend, who denied I had ever done so.  Needless to say, I held a grudge against him.  So our happy servant sees his fellow servant, and this is what I think happened.  This wasn’t the first time our forgiven slave had requested that his fellow servant pay the debt he owed. In the original text, it was one hundred denarii, roughly how much a laborer might be expected to make in three- and one-half months.  And every time the forgiven servant has asked, the other servant has an excuse.  And something snaps in the servant who has been forgiven.  He is dealing with a grudge against his fellow servant, and he hands him over to be put in prison till the debt is paid.  And when the king hears about this, the forgiven servant is in worse shape than had the king sold him and his family into slavery.  

Yes, Jesus is reminding us that God has forgiven us over and over again, of a debt we could never pay, a debt that Jesus paid for us.  But the only way we can truly accept his forgiveness is to be like God and forgive each other the entire debt, every time we are offended.  

Because here’s the thing.  Forgiveness is not about the other person.  It is about what is happening in your soul when you don’t forgive.  The writer Hannah Moore said, ““Forgiveness is the economy of the heart... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.”  Another quote: “Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realizing you are that someone.”  And of course, there is that saying, “Forgive your enemies because it really annoys them.”  

So I’ve learned to forgive in this deep way.  It’s not easy, and usually means I need the help of my guardian angel.  But it’s that internal reaction that guides me.  And when I feel that grudge welling up in me, I let it keep rising till it’s floating off into outer space and I’m at peace again.  Forgiveness ultimately is not about the other person.  There are people that I’ve forgiven many times, but since their behavior toward me doesn't change, I just avoid them.  But as another saying goes, “There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.”  Until I forgive my brother, I can’t move forward.  So pray for the power to live in a state of forgiveness, because when you do so, you are imitating God.  

Twenty third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:15 - 20

Sometimes we miss things when we look at the gospel reading in isolation.  The reading today is taken from a section of Matthew’s gospel which scholars think is about dealing with conflict among the believers.  Before today’s reading, there was the story of the lost sheep, in which the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to find the one, and rather than punishing it, he brings it back and celebrates the fact.  So Matthew is telling us that the first thing to think about when someone strays is that we be gentle, that we go out of our way to bring the wandering sheep back home, that we rejoice when our efforts are successful.  What a contrast with how things seem to work today, when the first response to disagreement is to cancel the other person.

Sin, of course, for the writer of this gospel, meant something obvious, something that threatened the unity of the community.  Our faith community, the Church, has clear teachings, and when a member violates those teachings publicly, the unity and even the existence of the community is threatened.  I meet a lot of elderly former Catholics in the nursing homes.  Many dropped out because of the priest scandals twenty years ago.  And today we are seeing our church in America shrink, possibly because we aren’t concerned about sin anymore.    

Then we reach today’s reading.  Jesus puts aside the parables and gives some simple instructions as to how to deal with disagreement, or as it says here, “if your brother sins against you…”  Now we have to pause here because there are translations that say, “If your brother sins”.  I think we need to hold both statements together.  Maybe Jesus is saying “if your brother sins in your opinion” because what you see or hear about your brother’s actions causes you to form a judgment that he is sinning.  So you can see, you may be wrong about whether he sins or not; if you are right, your brother may not know he is sinning, that happens a lot these days because our church is very quiet about what constitutes sin; or your brother may recognize that what he is doing is wrong and he does it anyway.  I think that’s why the first step in Jesus’ method is to confer with your brother privately.  Maybe misunderstandings will be straightened out this way.  Maybe your brother will learn something from you -or vice versa.  Maybe your efforts will have no effect.  

If your brother persists in his behavior, the next step is to consult a few other people who agree that what is going on is a sin, and go to him together.  Maybe peer pressure will change his behavior.  I’ve certainly witnessed that many times, not just with respect to sin, but other kinds of objectionable behavior.  We human beings are herd animals and we like the approval of our fellow man.  And if I think what I am doing is all right, and several people that I respect tell me differently, I may just come around to their point of view.  

Finally, in the case of sin, the next step is to have the assembly correct the sinner.  This, by the way, is the job of the pastor, or the bishop, or sometimes the pope, all of whom by nature of the sacrament they have received have some role in ruling over the faithful.  Ruling, of course, means in this case speaking for the church as  a whole.  Again, a real problem today, since the voices of our teachers don't always come through clearly.  

And when the church speaks and the sinner doesn’t change, we treat them like a gentile -- which means, excommunication.  Of course if this process is to have any chance of success, it must be reserved as a last resort.  

As we proceed onward in this gospel Jesus tells us two more things.  We, the church, can bind and loose.  In Jesus’ time and indeed among modern Orthodox Jews and conservative muslims, and among some Christian sects like Mennonites and Mormons and a few others, this power is exercised by those in authority.  People violating the code of conduct are considered out of the group, and some penance is required to return.  The early Christians did the same thing.  We even know of situations in the Middle Ages where kings were excommunicated and did public penance in order to have the excommunication lifted. 

Finally Jesus assures us that he will be with us in the matter of church discipline -- “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am”.  

Now if we were to read on in Matthew, we would meet the unforgiving servant, who has been forgiven by his master of a huge sum of money, and turns around and refuses to forgive a fellow servant who owed him a small amount.  Jesus reminds us in this discourse to never lose sight of the fact that we are the recipients of great mercy and must extend mercy to our fellow man, even those who offend us.

So in summary, there is a parable about how we are to regard someone who strays from the community -- like a lost sheep -- our responsibility is to try to rescue this one.  How do we do it, according to a gradual increase in gentle pressure, and if nothing works, expel him -- because if we tolerate sin in our midst, we endanger the community.  We are still suffering as a church from the tolerance of sin by our bishops among our clergy.  If only someone had listened to Jesus.  Finally, Jesus reminds us that in terms of internal discipline of church members, mercy must be foremost. 

And this isn’t just a message for church leaders.  It’s for each one of us.  If our friends and neighbors knew that we had a sense of right and wrong and weren’t afraid to speak up when someone we cared about was sinning, maybe our church would be better off.  

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 16:21-27

If you remember the gospel from last Sunday, you heard Jesus give Simon a new name -- Peter.  Today poor old Peter gets another new name -- Satan.  And you see in the story today that Jesus calls Peter an obstacle.  Actually, in Greek he calls him skandalon, which means a rock you stumbled over.  Peter goes from a rock upon which Jesus will build his church to a rock that Jesus could stumble over.  

Peter is acting in a very human way.   He has heard Jesus predict his suffering and death.  He doesn’t want that for his friend, so he protests.  Does Jesus over-react?  I wonder if Jesus is remembering his temptations in the desert, not too long before this.  There Satan tempted Jesus with the easy way; if you are hungry, turn these stones into bread; if you worship me, I’ll give you the kingdoms of the world, Satan tells him.  And these were real temptations, just as what Peter is proposing is a temptation.  Jesus is a human being and doesn’t want to be nailed to a cross and hang there waiting to die any more than you or I want that.  Jesus knows that he has God’s power, and he can draw huge crowds; it wouldn’t be hard for him to overthrow the Roman empire and reform the Jewish religion.  And maybe that’s why Jesus reacts to Peter’s statement -- he’s been thinking the same thing.  

And then he proceeds to tell his apostles how God thinks, and how they must think.  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself; whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; what can one give in exchange for his life?  And if you look at Jesus’ public life, you can see that he puts this way of thinking into practice, not just at the time of his suffering and death, but in many other cases.  He attracts huge crowds, but then in the middle of the night moves on to another city.  He alienates some potential allies, the Pharisees, who are sincerely trying to live according to God’s law, by calling them whitewashed tombs.  The gospels for the weekdays this past week contained statements to this effect.  And he says things that drive away all but the most devoted; he tells the crowds that they must eat his body and drink his blood.  So Jesus keeps his eyes on what he knows is his destiny, but what as a human being he truly dreads.  And eventually most of the apostles get it -- because you can’t be much of an apostle if you don’t think the way God thinks.

When I was growing up, I lived in a town that was roughly 30 percent Catholic and 70 percent other, mostly protestants but ex Catholics, Mormons, and oddly enough, we even had a Baha'i meeting house that I rode past on my bicycle to school.  A lot of religious diversity.  But everyone had roughly the same morality.  It wasn’t a golden age by any means.  There was a lot of prejudice, especially toward native Americans, and the few Chinese and African Americans that lived in our small town.  But even the most red necked of us recognized that this was wrong.  There was anti-Catholic prejudice as well, and we Catholics didn't think much of the local Lutherans, and so on.  But we agreed that religion was a good thing.  I don’t know if there were any gay people -- almost certainly there were, but that topic never rose to the level of being part of anyone’s conversation.  And when someone stepped outside the bounds of our public morality, there were various degrees of pressure put on him or her, by family, friends, the community, in the hopes that the person would come back into the fold.  My dad had a friend who was a physician.  When that individual left his wife and kids for another woman, he lost my dad’s friendship as well as that of many others, so much so that he moved to a different city.  We were far from perfect, but we knew right from wrong.

Today we, and I include myself, are afraid of thinking as God thinks.  We are like Peter.  We don’t want trouble, for us or our friends or anyone else.  There are things we Catholics are against officially at least, ranging from abortion to euthanasia; to sex outside of marriage, to the tremendous imbalance between rich and poor, to ignoring the homeless and hungry.  But the voices on the other side are so loud and ours are so quiet.  And our silence is like Peter’s temptation to Jesus; our silence tells our society that we don’t really mean what we believe.

Jesus does not hold back.  He tells his friend that he is not just wrong, but that his being wrong puts him in danger of losing his immortal soul, losing his true life.  And he gives us, his disciples, an insight into how God thinks.  And it’s our job to tell our friends and relatives, especially our children, how God thinks.  If we live and speak the way Jesus taught, and teach that to those around us, we have nothing to fear when the Son of Man repays every person according to his conduct.   

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 16:13-20

They used to make a big thing about names.  They still do, in many parts of the world.  Some of the tribes of Native Americans would give different names to a person  as he or she passed through different stages in life.  Little Squirrel would eventually become Soaring Eagle, and so forth.  Giving a new name to someone often meant being endowed with new powers, with new authority, with new responsibilities.  We see some traces of that in our own Catholic traditions.  When we baptize someone, we baptize them by name; it’s as though we name them in the presence of God.  When someone is confirmed, he or she traditionally takes the name of a saint.  Mine was Thomas after Thomas Aquinas.  One of my classmates wanted to take the name Arthur, because he really liked the stories he’d read of King Arthur.  In those days we didn’t have Google, so Sister Mary Susan made him take another name.  But  Google showed me that there was a Saint Arthur of Glastonbury, who was one of the English martyrs.  Finally, it’s traditional in many religious orders for those who profess their final vows to take a new name.  Growing up, almost all the nuns who taught me were Sister Mary Something or Other.  If you called out “Sister Mary” many heads would turn.  

Taking a new name in our tradition means that we recommit to leading a holy life.  We in a sense turn our backs on the past and fix our gaze on the future, keeping in mind that we are always getting closer to that point in time when the opportunity to grow in holiness, in closeness to God, in friendship to Christ, will no longer exist.  At my age I can feel this moment approaching.  

Jesus gives Peter a new name in today’s gospel.  He calls him “Peter”, Petros, in Greek, and Cephas in Hebrew.  He might have called him “Rocky” in English.  And Jesus makes a little pun on that name, he says Blessed are you, rock, upon this rock I will build my church.  The Greek word for Church is ekklesia, which means drawing people out.  Peter’s job is to be used by Jesus to gather people together out of the world’s population.  

Not everyone is saved.  We’d like to think so, and sometimes we turn to scripture to support our view.  But it’s a thin support. There's a lot more to support that those saved are in a sense drawn out of the human race.  We don’t know what percentage.  If you go by Sister Faustina, everyone gets three chances after they have died to accept God’s mercy and therefore his salvation.  If you go by Saint Theresa of Avila , she had a vision in which she saw souls falling into hell like snowflakes.  And Jesus himself tells us that many will enter through the wide gate that leads to destruction.  

The point is not that we should worry about how many souls are lost.  The point isn’t even that we should have an opinion about this.  It’s not a question we can answer.  The only question we can answer is whether we are working on our salvation and whether we are in any way being obstacles to other people who are seeking salvation.  

I’m sure many of you have read the recent pastoral letter from Bishop Strickland of Texas who offered seven statements which he holds are unchanging truths handed down from the apostles.  His concern is that several of these truths are being threatened by modernist tendencies in the church, including the forthcoming synod on synodality.  I hope you will read it and see if you agree.  But the very first statement is that “Christ established One Church—the Catholic Church—and, therefore, only the Catholic Church provides the fullness of Christ’s truth and the authentic path to His salvation for all of us”.  The sixth statement begins “The belief that all men and women will be saved regardless of how they live their lives (a concept commonly referred to as universalism) is false and is dangerous, as it contradicts what Jesus tells us repeatedly in the Gospel.” 

The bottom line is that the Church Jesus established at the moment we read about in this gospel is still around, and still has as one of its main purposes to draw people out of the world onto the path to salvation, using you and I, who have been called by name, at baptism, at confirmation.  The gates of the netherworld, or hell, will not prevail against the Church, Jesus promised that.  But each of us can decide whether we are part of that mission or whether we will stand aside passively.  So today let us pray that like Peter, we will know how to answer our Lord when he asks us, “Who do you say that I am?”  Because we Catholics believe that Jesus is the head and the Church is his body, and they can’t be separated.  Pray for the future of our church and for the strength and wisdom to uphold what Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God, teaches through her.  

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 15:21-28

When you hear the gospel today, it doesn’t sound very much like the Jesus we think we know. Here is a desperate woman who calls out for his help, and he ignores her. She keeps calling out and the disciples tell him to send her away. Finally, she gets his attention, and he rebuffs her. “I was sent only to the lost sweep of the house of Israel,” he tells her. But even that doesn’t stop her. So he insults her. “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” Of course we know how this ends, because I’ve just read the gospel to you and it’s very familiar; the woman seems to make a little joke and Jesus is so pleased that he compliments her on her faith and heals the daughter.

So there are two people to learn from in this story. One is the Canaanite woman. Jesus, according to Matthew’s story, has crossed the border from Israel into the land of Tyre and Sidon. This was pagan territory. This was where the remnants of the people that had been defeated by the Jews lived. Caananites had once had a kingdom in what was now Israel. A Canaanite would have to be very desperate or even foolish to expect anything from a Jew, even if she had the nerve to ask for something. But she didn’t give up. I recently met a man in a nursing home who had been raised a Catholic, married in the Church, raised his children Catholic, and continued to be active in his parish until his wife died. He told me that this was the moment when he lost his faith, because God didn’t answer their prayers. A few doors down from that man was a lady who had lost her husband of just a few months before being admitted to the hospital for fractures sustained in a fall. They had also prayed for a miracle, but even though she was sad and missed him, she was convinced that he was in heaven and waiting for her, and his death had only increased her faith that God had everything under control.

We could perhaps say that Jesus’ treatment of the Canaanite woman was to demonstrate to those around him the depth of her faith, or perhaps strengthen her faith. Saint Augustine, after all, said that God sometimes withholds what we ask for so that our faith will increase. Or perhaps it was to show that we should persist in prayer, never giving up on God, as the man I mentioned seemed to have. Because finding the hand of God in our lives is perhaps the object of prayer. The Canaanite woman did get what she requested. The lady I mentioned seemed to have received the assurance that all was well with her departed husband. God answers prayers, you just have to look for the answer.

The other person to learn something from is our savior, Jesus. As we heard in the first reading, the idea that salvation would come to the Jews first, and then to other nations, was not original with Jesus. Isaiah foretold it and so did other prophets. Jesus himself explicitly says “salvation is from the Jews” when he is speaking to the woman at the well in the gospel of John. So it is not surprising that Jesus and his apostles react to this woman as they initially did. Some people read into this story that it’s there to tell us that Jesus’ message is for everyone. But Jesus didn’t change his plan -- he continued to minister to the Jews as he had been doing before this event. And the earliest Christians mostly Jewish people, clearly saw their role in salvation history -- to receive the message and bring it to the world. So I see this as a moment in which Jesus re-examines his own beliefs.

Jesus is, after all, human, and even though he is also God, we are told in the gospel of Luke that he grew in wisdom and stature. Of course God knows everything, but God can’t be a human being if he can’t learn. How do I explain this? I don’t. But I do think this story is here partly to tell us that we should be open to changing our deeply held beliefs if the evidence is there. Jesus probably hasn't given much thought to whether Canaanite pagans had faith; they worshiped different Gods and didn’t follow Jewish dietary and purity rules, which of course had been given to the Jews by God through Moses. Why would they have faith? But confronted by the evidence, Jesus commends the woman for her faith and works a miracle for her.

Don’t give up on prayer, even if it seems that God is not answering prayer. He always does. Look for evidence.

If you are in a situation where your prejudices are challenged, don’t be afraid to open yourselves up to change. Jesus did.

If you have someone who has fallen away from the faith, or never seemed to have faith in the first place, remember that Jesus is showing us that God is not bound by our rules. Jesus came for the lost sheep of Israel, but steps out of his mission in answer to someone’s prayer.