SALVATION AND PERSEVERANCE: Be humble and practice justice

Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Mat­thew 15:21–28: Then Jesus went out from there and depar­ted to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, say­ing, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of Dav­id! My daugh­ter is severely demon-pos­sessed.” But He answered her not a word. And His dis­ciples came and urged Him, say­ing, “Send her away, for she cries out after us.” But He answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then she came and wor­shipped Him, say­ing, “Lord, help me!” But He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” And she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their mas­ters’ table.” Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daugh­ter was healed from that very hour.

Some people mis­takenly think that sal­va­tion is only for a selec­ted few. But they are wrong. That is not what Jesus thought. Accord­ing to Jesus, sal­va­tion is for any­one who mer­its it (cf. Ps 24:3–4; Mat­thew 25:31–46). In his teach­ings, Jesus gradu­ally mani­fes­ted the uni­ver­sal­ism of sal­va­tion. Before his resur­rec­tion, he instruc­ted his dis­ciples to focus their ini­tial mis­sion on the Jew­ish people rather than on Gen­tiles or Samar­it­ans. In his post-resur­rec­tion man­date and before his ascen­sion, he strictly instruc­ted his dis­ciples thus: “Make dis­ciples of all the nations, bap­tising them in the name of the Fath­er and of the Son and of the Holy Spir­it, teach­ing them to observe all things that I have com­manded you.”

After expos­ing the hypo­crisy of the Phar­isees and the scribes and silen­cing them (cf. Matt 15:1–9), Jesus left Jew­ish ter­rit­ory for the Gen­tile region of Tyre and Sidon, the two main cit­ies of Phoen­i­cia. The Canaan­ite woman’s request is an exten­sion of God’s sal­va­tion to all of human­ity. Such sal­va­tion is not a mono­poly of any nation, people, or individual. 

Jesus ignores the Canaan woman: Ini­tially, Jesus ignored the woman and refused to say even a word to her. This should not scan­dal­ise us. Rather, it should be taken as a didact­ic tac­tic. Gradu­ally, the dis­ciples were com­ing to an under­stand­ing of the true iden­tity of Jesus. After the incid­ent in Mat­thew 14:15–17, they can­not repeat such a mis­take again. Hence, they implored Jesus to listen to the woman who cried after them.

“I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This was Jesus’ response when the dis­ciples implored him to listen to the woman. Jesus used these words to express the thought of the Jew­ish people who erro­neously thought sal­va­tion was for them alone. Today, some Chris­ti­ans think they are more holy than oth­ers. How myop­ic such people are! Pray­er alone does not make you holy and just (cf. Mark 7:5–8). Pro­longed fast­ing is not a jus­ti­fic­a­tion for a just life. Abstain­ing from cer­tain food, alco­hol, and cer­tain wear does not mean you are just before God (cf. Mark 7:18–23). People should stop sub­sti­tut­ing what God wants with human laws and reg­u­la­tions (cf. Mark 7:5).

It pays to per­severe: Per­sever­ance is con­stancy and tenacity. It is not giv­ing up, even when things are very hard, take a long time, or do not go well. It is the steady effort to reach a goal des­pite prob­lems. Not­with­stand­ing Jesus’ pro­voca­tions, the Gen­tile woman remained calm and per­severed. Jesus acknow­ledged this and said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” 

The Gen­tile woman had a prob­lem, the same way each of us has his or her own prob­lems too. She was not Jesus’ dis­ciple, yet she had con­fid­ence in him. 

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SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 20^th Sunday of the year (A) is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 409–414. Happy reading!

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For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.