Sunday, August 20, 2023

Homily for 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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 & the Canaanite Woman (Pieter Lastman)

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).



[1] Ad gentes 2; cf. Gaudium et spes 92.

[2] E.g., in his intention for October 2021.

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