The Gospel for this Sunday is difficult to understand. It seems that Jesus is being mean. A woman comes to him with a desperate request. And Jesus repels her. How can He not be moved by her affliction?
This woman has followed Jesus and the disciples and sought healing for her daughter who is tormented by a demon. And the response of Jesus to her is first silence and then a sharp reply.
But the woman shows endurance. She doesn’t wander away and complain about the Lord. She doesn’t gossip about the Lord and His response to her. Instead, she shows even more virtue than before. His words to her were not in insult; they were a calling.
When the Lord does not seem to answer our prayers, as heartfelt and desperate as our prayers may be, it is not necessarily because we are praying the wrong way. It is also not because the Lord does not hear our prayers. It may seem to us that if He does not answer our prayers the way we want Him to, that He is rejecting us. He is not. He is calling us.
It can instead be that when we make such demands of the Lord, we allow our tendency to control things and our focus on getting results to drive us. When control and the focus on results are finally cast out, it is often only by repeated embracing of humility.
Jesus did not reject the earnest plea of the woman. He revealed the treasure hidden in its depths. And Jesus reveals the treasure: “O woman, great is thy faith” (Mt 15:28).If the woman had simply gotten the result she hoped for from Jesus, she would have never seen the treasure.
Prayer is not about getting something from God. It is about giving ourselves to God.
God has a treasure. He has chosen to hide it in the human heart. Only faith can find it.
God bless,
Msgr. Bransfield
