St. Mary Parish, Manchester at 210 West Main Street, Manchester, MI 48158 US - The Importance of Prayer
|
In the Gospel of today’s Mass (Matt 15:21-28) Saint Matthew tells us that Jesus and his disciples withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. He went from the shores of the Sea of Galilee to the coast of the Mediterranean. There a Gentile woman approached him. She was a Canaanite, a descendant of the original peoples of Palestine, the land which God had promised to the Jews. She cried out with a loud voice: Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.
Despite the woman’s cries, the Evangelist relates of the Lord that he did not answer her a word. According to Saint Mark, this first encounter took place in a house, and it was here that the woman fell down at his feet (Mark 7:24-25). It seemed as if Our Lord did not pay any attention to her.
Later on, when Jesus and his companions were getting ready to leave the house, Saint Matthew writes that the disciples complained to Jesus: Send her away, they said, for she is crying after us. The woman perseveres in her clamour, but the response of Jesus seems curiously cold: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The woman refuses to give up: But she came and knelt down before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ What faith! What humility! What steadfastness there is in her petition!
Jesus uses the image of the Kingdom to explain how He must first preach the Gospel to his Jewish brethren, the chosen people: It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs, He says. But the woman, armed with an unshakable faith, will not take ‘No’ for an answer: Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table. She enters into the parable and conquers the heart of Christ, provoking one of the greatest compliments uttered by Our Lord as well as procuring the miracle she requested: O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly. This was the reward for her perseverance.
The noble mothers who appeal in the Gospels are always seeking the best for their children. They know how to appeal to Jesus for assistance and favours. On one occasion it was the mother of James and John who approached the Lord to seek advancement for them. Another time it was the widow of Naim who was weeping for the young man who had been her only child. Perhaps it was only an anguished and pleading look into the eyes of Christ that led him to bring the body back to life… The woman in today’s Gospel is a perfect model of constancy in prayer, a model intended for all those who tire easily of praying to God.
Saint Augustine relates in his Confessions how his mother, Saint Monica, never ceased to implore God for the conversion of her son. Nor did she weary of asking good and wise people to speak to her son to dissuade him from his erroneous ways. One day a holy bishop said to her these words by way of consolation: Go your way; as sure as you live, it is impossible that the son of these tears should perish (St. Augustine, Confessions, 3, 12, 21). Much later, Saint Augustine himself was to write: If I did not perish in error, it was due to the daily tears of my mother, who was so full of faith (idem, Treatise on the gift of perseverance, 20, 53).
God listens in a special way to the prayer of those who know how to love, even though at times it may appear that He is deaf to the entreaty. He wants our faith to become more strong, our hope to become more profound, our love to become more trusting. He wants everyone to have the desire and the humility that a good mother has.