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Jesus and the Canaanite Woman by Pieter Lastman (1617). |
So, who was the woman in today’s Gospel? We don’t know her name, we only know that she spoke Greek and was from Syrophenicia. So she was not a Jew, like Jesus.
Now that’s understandable, because Jesus has entered a non-Jewish area (Tyre) for the first time, trying to escape the Jewish crowds who he has been healing for the past few days. So today, this Syrophenician keeps asking him to heal her daughter who was possessed by a demon.
So insistent was this woman that the disciples tell Jesus to send her away. Recognizing she was not a Jew, Jesus tells her that his miracles are intended first to convert the House of Israel, and that you do not take the food destined for the children and throw it on the floor to be eaten by the little dogs.
But this woman is something else. She just won’t quit and she comes back insisting that even the little dogs under the dinner table eat the children’s scraps.
At which Jesus marvels at her insistent faith and tell her that her daughter is healed.
This woman already understood what Jesus would later say: Ask and you will receive. Knock and it will be opening to you.
If only we would ask with such insistence and belief, perhaps our prayers would be heard as well.
