Jesus Leads us to Ecumenical Witness

Homily
TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
14 AUGUST 2005

Matthew 15: 21-28

[Mat 15:21] Then Jesus went from that place and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
[Mat 15:22] And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, "Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon."
[Mat 15:23] But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, "Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us."
[Mat 15:24] He said in reply, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
[Mat 15:25] But the woman came and did him homage, saying, "Lord, help me."
[Mat 15:26] He said in reply, "It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."
[Mat 15:27] She said, "Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters."
[Mat 15:28] Then Jesus said to her in reply, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed from that hour.
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In today's Gospel, why does Jesus at first ignore, then rebuff, the Canaanite woman's pleas for her daughter? Two reasons have been offered:

1. Jesus wanted to emphasize his mission to the Jews; in fact, He states that He was sent only to the "lost sheep of Israel". He is to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, and only later empower the apostles at Pentecost to preach to the whole world.

2. He wanted to elicit from the woman the manifestation of humility and the declaration of faith which she ultimately made.

These two reasons are connected. His mission to the Jews comes to its complete fruition after his passion, death, and resurrection. The salvation which He wins is ultimately to be applied to all men, as He indicates to the Samaritan woman at the well:

[John 4:21] Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
[John 4:22] You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.

In stating that "salvation is from the Jews", He reveals that in the whole course of what we call "salvation history", the Jews were chosen to be those people through whom God would manifest His grace and mercy to all mankind in the new creation to be won through Jesus Christ. That is, God shows His intent to impart the supernatural life of grace to redeemed mankind through the collaborative ministry of men.

In delaying his granting the woman's request for her daughter, He elicits from her the declaration of faith which He states quite clearly is a necessary accompaniment of the deliverance granted to her daughter. He did not say, "Your daughter is cured". Rather, He said, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." He accepts the woman's declaration of faith as a collaboration with Him in the healing of her daughter.

Jesus states that His mission is to the "lost sheep of Israel". He is later to charge His apostles with the mission to the rest of the world. As He states in John chapter 14:

[John 14:12] Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

The "greater works" that the apostles will do will include the miracles they will do in the Lord's name, but perhaps more importantly, they will preach the good news to the whole world.

Even though His mission is to the "lost sheep of Israel", there are many places in the Gospel where His compassion and the universality of His mission are manifested: the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman with the hemorrhage, the centurion, and the woman in today's Gospel. These occasions offered contrasts with the rejections that He received from His own people. As St. John Chrysostom put it with regard to today's Gospel:

"...driving away people who were coming to Him was unworthy of His love for humanity. For if one should pursue those who are trying to escape, much more should one not try to escape those who are pursuing."

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We are members of His church, the "New Israel". God continues to apply the grace of salvation, which is His very own life, to men through the ministry of men. We see this in the celebration of the sacraments, in public and private prayer, and above all in the supreme act of worship, the Eucharistic celebration.

Whoever each one of us is, and wherever in the Body of Christ the Lord has willed to place us, we must not lose awareness of our privilege and obligation to collaborate with the Holy Spirit in the ongoing application of the merits of Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection. According to the circumstances of our vocation in the church, we minister to members of the household of faith, to baptized Christians who are not Catholics, and to unbaptized persons.

We keep in mind Peter's admonition:

[1 Pet 3:15] ... Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
[1 Pet 3:16] but do it with gentleness and reverence...

Whenever and wherever we are called to collaborate with the Holy Spirit in ministering to others, we must keep the following clearly in mind:

We can't do it without God;
God won't do it without us.

That we are each of us called to ministry follows directly from Jesus' own words:

[John 7:37] On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, "Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.
[John 7:38] Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: 'Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'"
[John 7:39] He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive...

We first receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus; we then impart the Holy Spirit we have received to those to whom we encounter in the circumstances of our lives, through the words we speak and the witness of a Godly life. This activity, which we call "apostolic mission", is mandated and suffused through with grace by the sacrament of confirmation. In the sacrament of baptism, we share in the communion of the persons of the Blessed Trinity; in the sacrament of confirmation, we share in their mission.

Here the vocation of the laity is expressed clearly: Christians are called to make Jesus Christ present in the power of the Holy Spirit ultimately to every single person in the world. The New Israel, the Church, is the signpost pointing the way and enabling access to the kingdom of the Father, which as the Lord petitions in the prayer he taught us, is to come to be in the world as it is in heaven.

Dear Catholic Christian, to emphasize the seriousness of your vocation, consider carefully that there might be persons for whom you will be the only contact they will ever have with Jesus Christ, and that your witness and example might be a necessary instrument God will use for their eternal salvation. When we are faithful to this vocation, He gives us a wonderful promise as is stated in Chapter 5 of the letter of St. James:

[James 5:19] My brothers, if anyone among you should stray from the truth and someone bring him back,
[James 5:20] he should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Here in the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, we are blessed with a faith community centered on the eucharist, catalyzing ministry to one another and outreach ministry to the community at large. We experience the power of the Holy Spirit acting through prayer and the sacraments, and with and through each other.

We have our ups and downs in our shared Christian walk. But when some of us weaken, support is always at hand from others to share our burden and lift us up. With this ongoing mutual support, our faith grows, our hope grows, and most importantly, our love grows: our love of God experienced through, with, and in each other, always keeping in mind:

We can't do it without God;
God won't do it without us.