Reflection for 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

If you listened carefully to this Gospel reading, you might have been surprised at a couple things. Did you notice that Jesus doesn’t want to help the Canaanite woman? That’s a bit surprising. Isn’t this the same Jesus who repeatedly throughout the gospels reaches out to welcome, teach, heal and eat with outcasts, sinners, women and the marginalized members of his society? How could he not say “yes” right away? What is going on here?

And the woman – she is rebuffed by Jesus and his disciples on the grounds that his mission during his ministry is confined to the Jews. To the Jewish community for whom Matthew writes, this Canaanite woman represents all that had gone wrong – she was a permanent outsider. How dare she ask Jesus to heal her daughter? Where did she get the courage to do so?

We call it faith – something we have been reflecting on for the last few weeks - a faith that so impresses Jesus that he grants her request and her daughter is healed. This unnamed woman had faith when it looked most unpromising. She persists in her prayer – “Lord, help me.” Have you ever been in that position, when faith was all you had left and it was going fast and you didn’t understand how you could hold on? When there was illness or death . . . when Covid-19 is rattling our country . . . when loved ones left . . . when your life savings were cut in half or you lost a job . . . when God seems so distant and does not seem to answer our prayer. Faith!

I had a brother 7 years younger than me who ended up with a rare disease of the nervous system and lost the ability to walk when he was around 18. I was working and living in another city at the time, and I remember praying so hard for him and trying to psych up my faith so that I would really believe that the Lord would cure him. I’d say, “I do believe, I do believe.” Then I would wait for my parents to call with the good news. But they never called, and my brother, Tom, eventually died of his illness.

What does it mean to really have faith? To really believe Jesus when he says, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will give you”? I’m not sure I know the answer to that. You may recall that a number of years ago, Dr. Issam Nemeh was going through the Cleveland area offering healing to the sick. Many were at Catholic churches. A man named Randy Zinn, who had a ruptured disc in his neck and was scheduled for surgery, went to one of Dr. Nemeh’s healing services. Listen to his account of what happened: “He asked me, ‘Do you believe in God’? I said, ‘I do.’ He said, ‘Do you believe that God could heal you?’ I said, ‘I could save you some time here; I believe in a God that could put man on earth, that allows the birds in the sky and who allows the grass to grow. Yes, I believe that all things are possible.’ And he said, ‘Well, this won’t take very long.’” In minutes, Randy Zinn says, he was healed.

We need to look at what faith is and how we react when darkness is all we see. Last week, we heard about Peter, who was walking on the water toward Jesus, became frightened, lost faith, and began to sink. The woman in today’s Gospel saw her daughter in pain, suffering with no hope, but she believed that Jesus could and would do something if only she would ask. And notice, she didn’t take “no” for an answer!

What is our faith? Do we have the faith to press forward even when it seems all is for naught? How do we keep it alive? We need to nourish and train our faith through daily prayer, through Eucharist, and through living the way we know Jesus wants us to live. Faith does not automatically remain alive; it must be nurtured and sometimes tested. The Canaanite woman didn’t care that she was an outcast; she didn’t care what the disciples thought. She believed in the unbelievable. . . she had faith . . . she prayed, “Lord, help me.” Jesus says, “Ask and you shall receive.” Do we have the faith to ask?

If you have a brief faith reflection on today’s reading that you would like to share, please send it to me at deaconruss@holyspiritunoh.org.