Then the disciples came and began to urge him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us!” Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Read more Public figures proposed that the Government more effectively coordinate existing defense initiatives
Then the woman came and knelt before him, pleading, “Lord, help me!” He answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” But she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
(From the Gospel according to Matthew 15:21–28)
“Lord, help me!”
The evangelist Matthew tells about a Canaanite woman whose daughter was possessed by a demon. The woman had heard that the Teacher of Galilee had the power to heal and free from evil spirits, but because of the crowd she could not approach Jesus and shouted from afar, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is terribly tormented by a demon!” (Mt 15:22). The evangelist notes that Jesus did not respond to this woman’s cry for some time. Then the woman pushed through the crowd and, kneeling, begged Jesus, “Lord, help me!” Then Jesus said, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish” (Mt 15:28). At that very hour her daughter was healed.
This Gospel story invites reflection on the importance of deep faith in a person’s life. Faith is not all the same. It can be very weak or very strong, like that of the Canaanite woman.
Faith is a gift from God. This gift can grow in a person’s heart, but it can also barely survive – it depends on the person’s own decision and efforts.
For faith to grow, one must live according to it.
For faith to grow, one must live according to it: communicate with God through prayer and adhere to the demands of faith. The greatest demand of faith is to live in love. To the Israelites traveling from slavery in Egypt, God gave the Decalogue as a guide for living in freedom. The most important commandment of the Decalogue is the commandment of love. Jesus constantly reminded his listeners of this commandment: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Mt 22:37–39).
Two virtues – faith and love – are inseparable. If there is no love in a person’s life, and they love only themselves, faith is doomed to perish. Conversely, with practiced love, faith grows. How can one not remember the people who, gathered under the banner of Caritas, care for our weakest members who are in great need of help. By caring for the poor, they grow in faith.
Faith weakens if a person focuses all attention on material things and values money and wealth above all else. Faith weakens and can completely extinguish if one lives by the motto: “Bread and circuses!” It is not science that distances people from God, but excessive concern for this temporary life, so that it is full of goods and pleasures.
God, loving a person, enlightens their mindset when He allows them to suffer. Our parents and grandparents, when exiled to Siberia, had nothing else to rely on but God. Among the essentials they had to take within a few hours, they never forgot to take down from the wall pictures of Jesus and Mary.
If the Canaanite pagan woman had not been visited by suffering because of her daughter’s illness, she would hardly have had such faith, which Jesus greatly praised and because of which He performed a miracle.
The word of God does not call us to remember God only when some suffering occurs, but reminds us that everything in our earthly life should be arranged according to the scale of the most precious values.
God’s affairs must always come first, then everything else. Then the Lord’s words spoken to the Canaanite woman will also be fitting for us: “Great is your faith!”
Read more Why are buttons on men’s and women’s clothes on different sides?
Cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičius
