Photo by Andrew Lancaster on Unsplash
There are many types of prayer.
Prayers of petition are probably the most common.
The Our Father itself is primarily a list of
petitions.
We’ve been taught to pray and to ask God for what
we want.
We’ve learned that we don’t always get what we
pray for.
At least not right away.
But we know God does listen to our prayers.
And that His ultimate plan for us,
Is to give us even more than we ever thought to ask
for.
We already have a lot to be thankful for.
With that background and with that generosity in
mind,
We might be taken aback by Jesus’ behavior in our
Gospel today.
The Canaanite woman repeatedly begs for his
help.
First, he completely ignores her, then he says he won’t
help her.
That’s shocking enough.
But even more, he compares her and her people, the
Gentiles, to dogs.
That would include all of us non-Jews.
“It is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
No analogy is perfect.
But, though it stretches our modern-day bounds of political
correctness,
Jesus did come up with a pretty good one.
The image he evoked clearly conveyed his message
to the woman.
He was here to minister to the Jews—the children.
Not to the other nations—the dogs.
She immediately understood—and embraced—the image
he’d created.
And she came right back at him with a quick, bold,
clever retort.
“Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the
table of their masters.”
She may be the only person in the Gospels to top
Jesus in a verbal exchange.
And her bold resolve has made her a model for persistence
in prayer.
There are very serious matters involved in their
encounter –
For her, a desperate plea for healing.
For him, an attempt to hold to his mission,
T0 serving the Jews as God’s first chosen people.
Despite that gravity, there’s a touch of
lightheartedness to their exchange.
And a sense of respect rather than malice or offense.
The woman calls him Lord and Son of David.
Jesus, who could read her heart, pushes her a bit.
But, in the end, he praises her for her great
faith, and grants her request.
This was one of the few times Jesus directly
ministered to a Gentile.
But those few instances began to open the door for
the whole world.
As Isaiah foretold in our first reading,
The time would come when foreigners
could join themselves to the Lord.
And after Jesus’ earthly ministry was completed,
we hear
Paul, calling himself the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Announcing in his letter to the Romans, that that
time had come.
God’s plan, by then, had moved forward to the next
stage.
Jesus had raised us, as his sisters and brothers,
To the ranks of the children.
God would lavish His gifts and His mercy not only
upon the Jews.
But upon all of us.
We were no longer the dogs in Jesus’ analogy.
. . .
And really, when you stop to think about it, especially
in our culture,
Was it so bad to be compared to a dog?
The word Jesus used can also be interpreted as
“puppy.”
That makes for an even fuzzier, friendlier analogy.
Dogs can’t come before the children, but they can
be treasured.
They have some truly praiseworthy qualities.
Fr. Tom Hart, a scholar who’s been staying with us
the past few weeks,
Pointed me to some saintly authority for that.
St Xanthias, one of the 3rd Century Desert
Fathers, said,
A dog is better than I am, for he has love and
does not judge.
Today, on Capitol Hill, we love and pamper our
dogs.
You see people walking their dogs at all hours of
the day and night.
I used to walk my German Shepherd, Rosebud, late
at night.
People who would probably never have stopped to
talk to me,
Would stop to say hello to her.
We’re funny about our dogs.
Many of us treat them as if they were our
children.
In return they give us their complete and unconditional
love and loyalty.
They happily accept us as their masters, and
follow our commands.
It seems that there’s nothing they’d rather do
than just be with us.
Even as an accustomed member of that Capitol Hill dog
culture,
I was surprised, when I visited Paris.
It wasn’t uncommon to go into an upscale Parisian restaurant
And see people holding their little dogs on their
laps.
Hand-feeding them at the table.
Again, no analogy is perfect.
But one comes to mind, at least for me,
When we look ahead to that ultimate gift—the Heavenly
banquet.
Or when we look at what we already have in
Communion at Mass.
We see that Jesus has indeed elevated us to the
ranks of the children.
But we can also see that
We’re still very much like those pampered Parisian
puppies.
Not scrambling for scraps on the floor.
But reclining at the table
Being hand-fed by our loving Master.
And all He asks in return is that we give Him our
love and loyalty.
