Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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Today's Readings
Is 56:1, 6-7; Ps 67:2-3, 5-6, 8; Rom 11:13-15, 29-32; Mt 15:21-28
Read today's readings at USCCBReflection
God delivered all to disobedience that he might have mercy upon all. Paul's sentence is one of the most astonishing in the New Testament. The whole catastrophe of human failure - every rebellion, every broken covenant, every person who turned away - is held within a plan that ends in universal mercy. Not because the disobedience doesn't matter. Because the mercy is larger than the disobedience.
The Canaanite woman found the mercy that was always meant for everyone. She argued her way past the apparent boundary and received what she came for - not a remnant, not a compromise, but the full healing. Her daughter was healed from that hour. The mercy did not run out.
Isaiah had promised it centuries before: my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Not for Israel with occasional exceptions. For all. The woman was not an exception. She was the demonstration.
The gifts and call of God are irrevocable. That word - irrevocable - carries a particular weight at the end of a long life in which you have watched people refuse the call, lose the gift, turn away. God's response to that is not to rescind the offer. His plan ends in mercy for everyone, including the ones who look furthest from it now.
Say Paul's sentence tonight over the person you are most worried about: God delivered all to disobedience that he might have mercy upon all. Name them. Hold them under that word. Trust it.
Prayer of the Faithful
- In gratitude that the mercy is larger than the disobedience - that the plan ends in mercy for all, including the ones we had almost stopped praying for, we pray to the Lord.
- For those who are the Canaanite woman in someone's life - arguing for a loved one they cannot manage the weight alone for - that God would hear them and name their faith great, we pray to the Lord.
- In the first week of Our Lady's Thirty Days, for the households praying the Hail Holy Queen tonight, and for the grace of thirty days of consistent closeness to Mary, we pray to the Lord.
Something to Do
Name the person you are most worried about - the one who seems furthest from the table, the one for whom you have been the Canaanite woman's role without knowing it. Say Paul's sentence over them: God delivered all to disobedience that he might have mercy upon all. Name them before God. Then trust the plan that ends in mercy.
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