Save as PDFIn the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
Today at the Divine Liturgy during the Gospel reading we heard about the healing of the daughter of a Canaanite woman. This small, and as it may seen unimportant episode from the earthly life of the Saviour has been imprinted by the Evangelists and the Church pays our attention to it. This is a touching event when a woman-pagan appears at the Saviour’s feet crying out and pleading Him to heal her daughter who was tormented by a devil. As for herself, she asks the Lord to take pity on her, as the daughter’s suffering torments her heart. We can see that the heart of this woman-pagan is like the kind earth in which the seed of God’s grace was already acting, as the heart assured her that the prophet who appeared in Judea was just the Messiah, just the Son of David whom the Jews were waiting for.
But the Lord hearing her petition is silent. He is silent because He wants to try her so as to make her faith stronger, and then give an example of her strong and unshakeable faith to other people. But the woman, who didn’t get an answer to her petition, kept shouting so loudly that the disciples couldn’t hear the cry of this unhappy mother and had to plead the Lord for her. And the Lord who came to suffer and die for all mankind including pagans, again refuses her and the Apostles. But the grief which became stronger because of her refusal makes her come up nearer to the Lord and plead Him for her daughter again. And here we saw new quality of the prayer of this woman – humility, as she wasn’t offended at reproaching words of the Lord who compared her to “a dog”, but gave a wise answer that “even little dogs eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table”. And here she already hears the words of the highest approval of her faith, approval of the strength and persistence in following Christ which that woman showed. “You have great faith”. Let your desire be a …
So, brothers and sisters let this woman be an example for us. And let our approach to Christ be not an empty and cool appeal to Him, our prayer be not “a gong booming or a cymbal clashing” but in the unwavering trust of the interior disposition of the heart, consisting in the imperishable quality of a gentle and peaceful spirit, we will follow our Lord and the Saviour. And then there is a hope for us to hear that blessed voice of Christ which, perhaps, won’t magnify our faith but will make us hope that we also won’t be rejected by God but will be received by Him as the Lord and our Father. Amen.