Today’s Gospel of St. Matthew presents a woman from the vicinity of the port city of Tire, in present-day Lebanon, where Jesus went, not by chance. Many say that he actually went north to meet the woman and heal his daughter. Because he recognized the woman’s deep faith before she appeared and began to cry: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is terribly troubled by an evil spirit.”
The Canaanite mother must have heard a lot of good things about Jesus when she decided to find Him and ask for help. The motive for her search for Jesus, the Son of David, was her love for her daughter, who was suffering terribly. The meeting therefore does not seem to be a matter of chance, although Jesus’s behavior after hearing the woman’s fervent plea is unpleasantly surprising. Jesus did not say a word to her, which does not mean that he ignored her. The woman called out her plea many times, disturbing the disciples, who advised him to let her go for the sake of holy peace. They wanted to avoid the crowd of curious people; perhaps they felt insecure beyond the borders of Galilee. On the other hand, we don’t know what they meant by that dismissal. The motive for their intervention was an effort to avoid possible problems of their own. They didn’t really care about the woman’s worries.
Jesus told the disciples that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. However, the woman continued to beg Him, falling on her knees before Him. There was an exchange of sentences between Jesus and the woman that today does not sound good to the Christian ear, but it looks like something from the test of faith of a mother from the vicinity of Tire. The woman passed the test perfectly when Jesus said, with recognition and as if surprised: “Woman, great is your faith; let it be done to you as you wish.”
The evangelist further states that the daughter of the Canaanite woman regained health in one moment. Jesus went back to the Sea of Galilee, which allows us to admit that the short trip from Syrophenicia – today’s Lebanon – was actually provoked by a desperate mother who had great faith in the power of Jesus, the Son of David. The basis and essential condition of religious life is faith. The crisis of the Church, authentic religious life, prayer, and morality is always the result of a crisis of faith.
Richard Rohr, an American Franciscan, says: “Until one accepts faith, hope, and love as the foundations of his life, his religiosity is a facade, an excuse, or a waste of time. Such an attitude is more part of the problem than part of the solution.”
Faith is a mysterious process of meeting God’s grace with human freedom. God bestows his infinite love on man and expects reciprocation. True, evangelical love is more an act of reason and will than of feelings. In evangelical love, feeling can be an accompanying element, but it does not play a fundamental role. Creative cooperation with God’s grace begins with its acceptance; it always takes place, and above all in those structures of the soul where relative human freedom functions.
The first three commandments from the stone tablets of the Decalogue show, among other things, the responsibility of man for the development, non-development, or complete disappearance of faith, hope and love. Man really cannot earn God’s love, but he can ask for it and express his consent to receive it in many ways. This is his fruitful collaboration with God’s gift of faith, hope, and love.
