Gratefulness to God
Father Stephen Bankemper
Guest
As we continue our way through Matthew’s Gospel, we come to the surprising story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, surprising, not just because Jesus speaks to her in a manner that seems offensive to us (and likely to her as well), but also because just two verses later he pays her the highest compliment he pays to anyone in the Gospels.
To get a better feel for this encounter, we should remind ourselves of how the apostles might have viewed this woman. Matthew tells us that she was from the region of Tyre and Sidon, places not high in the esteem of the Jews. Further, she was a Canaanite woman. Besides the fact that Canaanites worshipped pagan gods, the Jews’ opinion of them is reflected in the book of Wisdom:
“Those who dwelt of old in thy holy land/ thou didst hate for their detestable practices,/ their works of sorcery and unholy rites,/ their merciless slaughter of children,/ and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood.” (Wis 12:3-5a)
This was the woman the apostles saw crying to Jesus for mercy.
Many have struggled with Jesus’ treatment of her: first ignoring her, then dismissing her request to the apostles, and finally dismissing her to her face with his comment about taking bread meant for children and throwing it to dogs. Yet she does not back down from Jesus, but uses His term to further argue for her request.
It is worthwhile considering her rejoinder to Jesus. Instead of taking offense, she merely answers, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Whether or not she finds Jesus’ words objectionable, she is in fact acknowledging the truth of his comment: she is not a Jew and does not have the same claim on Jesus that the Jews have. Yet she is not asking for salvation or to be part of the covenant – the “bread” that belongs to the children. She is asking only for freedom for her daughter — a “scrap” that even an unworthy Canaanite woman might eat from the floor beneath the table. And her insistence leads Jesus to praise her with his highest praise: “O woman, great is your faith!”
We Catholics — especially we “cradle” Catholics — are subject to the temptation to take our membership in the Catholic Church for granted. We can forget that we do not have a right to be Catholic, that it is an undeserved grace. Our baptism into Christ’s salvation, the opportunity to have our sins forgiven and wiped away, the ability to worship God with “the sacrifice acceptable to him,” these are astounding graces. In our society in this time there is very prevalent the attitude that “we all worship the same God,” that “all religions are the same,” but, in fact, all religions are not the same. We are, through no merit of our own, members of the Church begun by Jesus. We offer his true sacrifice on our altars, we receive his true Body and Blood in Holy Communion, we receive his Holy Spirit in the sacraments, especially Confirmation. Those things do not make us better than anyone, they make us undeservedly blessed. Let us always (hopefully eternally) be grateful to God and use these graces to serve him with all our hearts.
Father Stephen Bankemper is pastor, St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Ft. Thomas, Ky.
