Homily for the
20th Sunday of Ordinary
Time
Aug. 20, 2023
Matt 15: 21-28
Is 56: 1, 6-7
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption,
Bronx
Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’” (Matt 15: 24).
The story about Jesus that we hear today is
quite startling. It doesn’t sound at all
like the Jesus we know, or think we know.
He sounds almost cruel in how he treats this pagan woman who comes to
him desperate for him to save her daughter from demonic possession. We needn’t consider just what that meant,
only that the girl’s condition was dire and the mother has only one hope for
her: “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of
David!” (15:22).
This pagan woman calls Jesus “Lord,”
recognizing his kinship with God, and “Son of David,” recognizing him as God’s
anointed one—someone anointed to liberate, protect, and save. She goes on to voice remarkable, persistent
faith.
Jesus isn’t impressed at 1st. He says his mission is only for Israel, not
for the Gentiles, the pagans. This issue
would later become the 1st major crisis in the infant Christian Church; you can
read about it in Acts of the Apostles ch. 15.
But for now Jesus seems closed.
It may help us to remember that Jesus is
fully human as well as fully divine.
That’s fundamental Christian doctrine.
Fully human, he’s a 1st-century Jew living under an unfriendly occupying
power, the Roman Empire—pagans. It may
help us to remember that, tho he was the Son of God, he was a man with a human
intellect, a human heart, human feelings.
Doesn’t St. Luke say in ch. 2 that the boy Jesus “grew in wisdom, age,
and grace” (2:40)? It may be that the
human, Jewish Jesus had to grow into more kindly feelings toward Gentiles.
St. Matthew also records how Jesus responded
positively to the faith of a Roman centurion and healed his servant (8:5-13),
and how he healed 2 demoniacs in pagan territory across the Sea of Galilee
(8:28-34). But in the latter case, Jesus
didn’t get a friendly reception from the local people.
But by the end of this same Gospel of St.
Matthew, Jesus, risen from the dead and about to ascend to heaven, is
commanding his followers to go out into the whole world and make disciples of
all nations (28:19).
Jesus came to fulfill the law and the
prophets, as he states in Matthew’s Gospel (5:17); he came to fulfill what
Isaiah prophesied in our 1st reading, that foreigners—i.e., Gentiles—would join
themselves to the Lord and minister to him (56:6), and God’s house would “be
called a house of prayer for all peoples” (56:7), not only the Jews.
And so Jesus does respond to the desperate woman
who cries out to him in the district of Tyre and Sidon (modern Lebanon). Her faith overcomes his reluctance.
Isaiah’s prophecy and Matthew’s Gospel
message are meant for us, too, brothers and sisters, 21st-century disciples of
Jesus. The 2d Vatican Council taught
that the Church is missionary by nature.[1] Pope Francis tells us that we all are called
to be missionary disciples.[2] Last week we Salesians commissioned—sent
forth—4 women and 4 men (4 of them middle-aged and 4 of them youths) to serve
as missionaries for a year in Salesian works in Bolivia, Cambodia, East Timor,
Mexico, Mongolia, and even Tampa, Fla.,.
Do all of us have to do something like
that? No. All of us have to do as the Canaanite woman
does in the gospel: persist in
faith-filled prayer to our Lord Jesus.
Do what Isaiah says in God’s name:
“Observe what is right, do what is just. . . . Love the name of the Lord and become his
servants” (56:1,6). Do what St. Paul
urged the Christians of Philippi to do:
“Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be
blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a
crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world”
(2:14-15). Shining like lights makes us
missionaries.
By prayer and by living day by day as Jesus
teaches us (without grumbling or questioning)—in your families, in your
workplaces, in the supermarket, online, on the highway, on vacation—you’ll be
missionary disciples of Jesus. What we
say and do, others hear and observe.
They can see and hear Jesus thru us.
That’s why we prayed in the collect of today’s Mass, “Fill our hearts
with the warmth of your love.” That’s
why our responsorial psalm prayed for God to “let his face shine upon us,” so
that his way might “be known upon earth among all nations” (67:2-3).
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