Praise be Jesus Christ.
Carissima Familia, my dearest family, happy feast of Our Lady of the Snows.
Today we meet a tenacious woman, a mother bear. Her daughter is sick with a demon. And though she is a Canaanite, and knows what the Jews think of people who aren’t Jewish, who are outside of the tribe, nonetheless, desperation leads her to come and cry out to this wandering teacher- miracle-worker. She makes a fuss and disturbs everyone with Jesus. I don’t know if they were at a meal, we don’t know. The disciples turn to Jesus and say…, what? ‘Why don’t you just heal this woman’s kid and let her go away?’ No, they don’t. They don’t care about her, nor about her request. The disciples instead say, ‘Get rid of her’.
Jesus in his divine foreknowledge uses this moment to break the whole foundation of the tribalism of Israel and indeed any tribalism that might emerge in His church. He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24) In other words: ‘Why should I help you? You are not one of my tribe.” His answer to her is a provocation, ‘Why should I give to you? I’m here to give to the children of my tribe. At the moment I’m having a break from being with my people. I’m not going to share what I have with dogs”. Harsh and provocative indeed. To harsh for some scripture interpreters who mollify by pointing out that the word he uses is “little dogs” (like our toy house puppies). He clearly infers she is a dog and dogs in the Middle East are approached as really disgusting? No Muslim today wants to have a dog anywhere near because they’ve still got that attitude. Dogs are filthy. So Jesus asks why he should give anything to someone who is filthy? How is this our loving Jesus speaking? I think that Jesus is giving voice to what the disciples were thinking
In answer, this woman, out of her fierce love for her child, with responds gentleness but with firmness. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” This is t he only time in all of the Gospels that anyone wins an argument with Jesus. The only time. Jesus always wins disputes, but seemingly not here. Yet remember, Jesus is the Lord of the argument – He knows with His Divine-Human understanding what is really at stake here: nothing less than that the Good News He brings is not limited by group-think, or by tribalism. Actually, He does win this deeper argument because he shows us that the power of tenacious passionate love of a mother for a child and not the careful doling out of favours for the in-crowd is what reveals the image of God’s love . As the Father of all people, all people, God passionately tenaciously wants His children to be freed from the demon. How many are the daughters and sons of humanity, all of them created to be children of the Father, who do not know the Father? Unbaptized or unaware of the gift of Baptism, they are in the grasp of the evil one.
Jesus tells the woman, “great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish” He is teaching us as His Church to get over our tribalism. The Church went through that great breaking out of tribalism within 30 years of Jesus’s Resurrection when Paul challenged the Apostles to preach to the gentiles as gentiles. Beyond even what we heard Jeremiah prophesy today, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel.” (Jer. 31:1) , In Jesus, we see God moving beyond this. He will be the God of all families of the earth, period, which is why you and I are here. And yet, when I think of the history of the Church, how often has tribalism and narrowness and judgmentalism still worked against the Gospel? All I have to do is remember the genocide in Rwanda, the most Christian Catholic country in Africa. How horrible the sight of the butchery of two tribes, who when push came to shove, did not see the face of Christ in each other, but only saw tribal rivals.
How do we undo this? By sharing the tenacious passion of God for the freedom of his children, that they be freed from the demon. That means our children and all children. It means being able to stand up to the world and not reinforcing in our families secular ideas of success. Leaving aside lens of what the world envisions success: being proud of our kids because they are well educated; because they look good; because they can “make it” with worldly happiness. How often do we communicate that our primary concern for our children is a good job and a safe life? This is not our way: we want our children to be free from the demon. Who cares if they are the top of the medical profession if they are still in the hands of the evil one?
Today is Mary of the Snows day. Mary is the one whom the demons fear. We must have Mary’s courage, because more than this Canaanite woman concern for one child, Mary is pleading for all God’s creatures. And she turns to us especially, who are God’s children, pleading for us and asking us to be those who witness to God’s plan with great tenacity. Mother-bears speaking and proclaiming the power of Jesus to melt the snows and coldness of hearts, to heal from the demon all of his children, and to fulfill God’s plan passionate plan when in the fullness of time, He became one of us. Born a child of Mary, a woman like us making her is also the mother of God.
We share in this plan when we mother-forth, when we father-forth, by tenacious prayer and joyful witness, the Godliness for which children have been created … even if they have forgotten.
Let us have courage. Let us be holy. Let us be saints.