The third part of the book of the prophet Isaiah (chapters 56-66), was written mainly for the Jews who were returning from the Babylonian exile to join their relatives who had been left behind in Judea. But today’s lesson is primarily addressed to those Jews who, after the Exile had officially ended, still chose to remain in Babylon as Jews among the Gentiles.

In this passage, the Lord God not only pleaded with these people (who preferred exile to the labor of returning to the Promised Land), to come home to Jerusalem and help to rebuild the City and the Temple, but also tried to make them understand the role the Gentiles would have in the coming Messianic Kingdom.

Though in the past all who came to the God of Israel were required to accept the Law and the Covenant, God’s concern for those outside that Covenant led Him to a new and radical solution. 

“The foreigners,” the Lord God declares to us today through Isaiah, “who join themselves to Yahweh, ministering to Him, loving the name of Yahweh and becoming His servants . . . them I will bring to My holy mountain and make joyful in My house of prayer . . . for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” 

Thus Isaiah’s prophecy applying directly to the coing Messianic Kingdom assured them that their God was equally interested in the people of other nations and in the descendants of Abraham. Hence, the exclusivist claims of the Jews as God’s chosen people would have to yield as God made room for others. For besides the exiles of Israel, Yahweh would receive the non-Israelites who had joined themselves to the Lord.

In short, the prophet reports, everyone has a part to play in God’s plan — even those who don’t belong to the “true religion.”

The clipart is from the archive of Father Richard Lonsdale © 2000. It may be freely reproduced in any non-profit publication.

Here, Paul asks how God could apparently go back on His  promise  to Abraham that Abraham’s descendants would always be God’s chosen people, now that those descendants had rejected Jesus. Paul answers his own question by explaining that God’s plan all along had allowed for  the Jews’ rejection of Jesus, so that the few Jews who accepted Jesus and went out to preach the Good News, like Paul himself, would be forced to turn to the Gentiles and bring them into the New Covenant. 

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, God permits evil only if He can draw a greater good out of it. Thus, God permitted both Jews and Gentiles to disobey Him so that He could show His mercy by offering eternal life to everyone who wishes to have it. 

Frustrated by the slow pace of Jewish conversions  and prevented from continuing to work directly among the Jews by the overt, physical hostility Jewish synagogues  showed him and his companions, Paul directed his preaching missions to the Gentiles, so that the Jews would become jealous and accept Jesus.  Thus, God’s secret plan to invite all people into the Covenant would be revealed and completed.

By the statement, “Their rejection is the reconciliation of the world,” Paul meant that the Jews’ rejection of Jesus allowed the world (the pagans, the Gentiles), to be reconciled to God.

By asking the question, “What will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” Paul meant that the Jews who at last accepted Christ would receive new life through the once spiritually dead pagans. Paul was convinced that the Jewish nation would eventually accept Christ because God’s” irrevocable” call, given to them through Abraham, was a call to eternal salvation.

Paul’s failure to convert his fellow-Jews serves as a model for us who must accept failure in our own lives, especially when it concerns our loved ones who refuse what we judge to be to their advantage. Paul’s message is also a challenge to us to pray fervently and often for the conversion of the Jews.

The clipart is from the archive of Father Richard Lonsdale © 2000. It may be freely reproduced in any non-profit publication.

The significance of the miracle: The Gospels describe only two miraculous healings Jesus performed for Gentiles:  the healing of the centurion’s servant (Mt 8:10-12) in Capernaum, and the healing of the daughter of the Canaanite woman which we hear today. The encounter with the Canaanite woman took place outside Jewish territory in Tyre and Sidon, two coastal cities, twenty-five and fifty miles north of Galilee in present-day Lebanon.  The story of this miracle is told by Mark (7:24-30) as well as by Matthew (21-23).  Both miracle  stories foreshadow the extension of the Gospel, the Good News, to the whole world.  

The woman in the today’s miracle belonged to the old Canaanite stock of the Syro-Phoenician race.  The Canaanites were the ancestral enemies of the Jews and were regarded as pagans and idolaters and, hence, as ritually unclean.  But this woman showed “a gallant and an audacious love which grew until it worshipped at the feet of the Divine, an indomitable persistence springing from an unconquerable hope, a cheerfulness which would not be dismayed” (Fr. James Rowland).  

By granting the persistent request of the pagan woman, Jesus demonstrates that his mission is to break down the barriers and to remove the long-standing walls of division and mutual prejudice between the Jews and the Gentiles. God does not discriminate but welcomes all who believe in Him, who ask for His mercy and who try to do His will.

Trustful persistence rewarded.  Jesus first ignores both the persistent cry of the woman and the impatience of his disciples to send the woman away. He then tries to awaken true Faith in the heart of this woman by an indirect refusal, telling her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But the woman is persistent in her request. She kneels before him and begs, “Lord, help me.”  Now Jesus makes a seemingly harsh statement, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 

The term “dogs” was a derogatory Jewish word for the Gentiles. Dogs were regarded by the Jews as unclean, because they would eat anything given to them, including pork. The woman noticed, however, that Jesus had used the word kunariois–the word for household pets – rather than the   ordinary Greek word for dogs – kuon.   She also observed that Jesus had used the word for dogs in a challenging way, urging her to answer in kind — a sort of test of the woman’s Faith.  So, she immediately matched wits with Jesus. 

Her argument runs like this:  Pets are not outsiders but insiders.  They not only belong to the family but are part of the family. While they do not have a seat at the table, they enjoy intimacy at the family’s feet.  Hence, the woman replied: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table!” (Mt 15:27), expressing her Faith that Jesus could and would heal her daughter.  

Jesus was completely won over by the depth of her Faith, her confidence and her wit and responded with delight, “Woman, great is your Faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.” We notice that the woman was refused three times by Jesus before he granted her request; finally, at her the fourth attempt, Jesus rewarded her persistence, curing her daughter in answer to  her plea. This silently underlines Jesus’  teaching (Lk 18:1-8) amplified by Paul in Eph 6:18)  that we must persist in prayer.  

This Gospel episode is also an account of a woman who got more from the Kingdom of God than she had hoped for. She had come to Jesus asking for one miracle, and she got two: her daughter was exorcised of her demonic possession and received a new life, and the mother herself, through her experience with Christ, found a new life as well.

The greatness of this woman’s Faith consists in:

a) her willingness to cross the barrier of racism;
b) her refusal to be put off or ignored because of her position in life and
c) her humility in admitting that she did not deserve the Master’s attention and time. 

The Catechism reminds us that the woman in today’s Gospel recognized in Jesus the messianic power attributed to the awaited “Son of David” (CCC #439). For, if one truly believes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, one trusts him and fashions one’s prayer requests accordingly (CCC #2610).

The clipart is from the archive of Father Richard Lonsdale © 2000. It may be freely reproduced in any non-profit publication.