Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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Today's Word
"O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." - Matthew 15:28 Full readings at USCCB
Real Talk
The Canaanite woman gets silence first. Then the disciples try to have her removed. Then Jesus tells her plainly: I wasn't sent to people like you. Then when she kneels and says Lord help me, he uses an image that should end the conversation: it's not right to give the children's bread to the dogs.
She takes that image and argues from inside it: yes, but even dogs eat what falls from the table.
He stops. He turns. O woman, great is your faith. Her daughter was healed from that hour.
Isaiah had already said: my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Paul says in Romans: God delivered all to disobedience that he might have mercy upon all. The woman was not an exception to the plan. She was the demonstration of it.
She came for her daughter, not for herself. Everything she did, she did for someone she loved.
Your Challenge
Relational: The Canaanite woman came for someone else. Think about the people in your life who are on the outside of what you'd consider the faith community's inner circle - by language, by background, by where they are in their own story. Isaiah says the house is for all peoples. What would it actually look like for your community - not in principle but in practice - to be that house? Name something specific.
One Prayer
Lord, your house is a house of prayer for all peoples. Including the people I tend to think of as outside it. God delivered all to disobedience that he might have mercy upon all - including them. Let me be someone who argues for the scraps being enough, not someone who sends people away. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us. Amen.
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