Last Sunday was the particularly challenging gospel about Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician Woman. \u00a0It is fraught in our culture at this moment for a number of reasons (one of which I will return to in a day or so), but the one worth focusing on right now is the deadly challenge the gospel throws down before the face of racism (most recently on display in Charlottesville and in the miserable response our Racist-in-Chief made to it\u2013and which his millions of Good White Christian defenders made in response to his response.<\/p>\n
A reader alerted me to this fine homily by Fr. Jacob Boddicker, SJ:<\/p>\n
In a few minutes we\u2019ll profess our faith in the form of the Nicene Creed, and one of the things we\u2019ll profess is our belief in one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. One. Catholic. The word \u201cCatholic\u201d comes from the Greek katholikos meaning \u201caccording to the whole\u201d or \u201cuniversal.\u201d We believe, in other words, in a Church that is everywhere, with room enough for people of every race, culture, and tongue. We also believe that this diverse, Catholic Church must also be one Church. Where many in our world see difference as being a cause for division, as Catholics we see\u2014and profess as essential to our Christian faith\u2014the possibility of unity in harmony with diversity.<\/p>\n
While in the beginning of our relationship with God He chose a particular people, He never intended for the relationship to forever be exclusive. He tells us in our First Reading that \u201cThe foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ministering to Him, loving the name of the Lord, and becoming His servants\u2026them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer\u2026for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.\u201d When we consider our own ancestry, we realize that at some point in our family history, someone answered the invitation to come to the Lord\u2019s mountain, to reject the worship of idols and false gods and instead worship the one True God who loves us so much that He sent His Son to be one of us, and to die for us. What other god has done such a thing for mankind?<\/p>\n
St. Paul tells us of his difficulties in spreading the faith in his time, since the old divisions between Jew and Gentile still ran strong. He refers to himself as \u201cthe apostle to the Gentiles\u201d and tells the Romans that they \u201chave now received mercy because of their disobedience,\u201d meaning his own people, the Jews. He tells us that \u201cthe gifts and the call of God are irrevocable\u201d meaning that God will not take back what He has offered in Christ: it was first offered to Paul\u2019s people, but it\u2019s been largely rejected: now it\u2019s being offered to the Gentiles, where it\u2019s being embraced. Yet Paul tells us that he sees God\u2019s mercy at work, because once his people see that the Gentiles\u2014who have never obeyed God\u2014are being shown mercy, they might realize that God is still offering them the same gift. In other words, God desires to show mercy to all mankind.<\/p>\n
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Incarnation. The Son of God comes among us as a member of a particular people\u2014the Jewish people\u2014but this is not the remarkable thing. The remarkable thing is that He became a human being at all. What the Incarnation teaches us is that God is one of us; He is not interested in the \u201cus\u201d verses \u201cthem\u201d game that the world so often wants to play. Before the Incarnation it was God and His people verses the world, yes: He made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, and no one else. But when God became a human being, when He became one of us, we all became, at least in our humanity, His people. It is now God and man united against the common Enemy, Satan, and any who choose to serve him.<\/p>\n
We see this in our Gospel today when a foreign woman comes to Jesus asking Him to free her daughter from a demon. He says something that initially comes across as callous: \u201cI was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.\u201d We might be tempted to think He was telling her that He wasn\u2019t here to help her \u201ckind\u201d, but only His people. She pleads with Him and He says, shockingly, \u201cIt is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.\u201d Is this our Jesus, the Jesus we know and love? Yes, it is: but look closely at what He is doing. Dogs were associated with lawlessness, with the wilds: He is saying that the Bread come down from Heaven is for the \u201cchildren\u201d, meaning those who are Children of God. He\u2019s searching her heart for a sign that she has the faith of a daughter, rather than the superstition of a pagan, because only then can His Father be a Father to her. And she says, both humbly and brilliantly, \u201cPlease, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.\u201d She calls Him \u201clord\u201d and \u201cmaster\u201d: she has, in her heart, come to believe that He is God. She\u2019s seen that not only is He the Messiah of His own people, but He is her Savior as well. He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but was not sent only for them. \u201cWoman,\u201d He says, \u201cgreat is your faith!\u201d<\/p>\n
This woman knew that the Savior of one people is the Savior of all people, that even though she did not belong to the People of God, in Jesus was the living, breathing image of God\u2019s desire to embrace all of humanity, to extend the Covenant to all races, to all the descendants of Adam and Eve. When we look at the events of Charlottesville, when we see the Nazi flag rise like a red ghost from the ash heap of history, when we hear racist rhetoric, as Catholics we naturally are taken aback: such beliefs not only run contrary to our Catholic faith, to the unified and diverse reality of our Church, but they run contrary to the very person of Christ Himself. He who\u2019s Spirit gave the gift of tongues to the Apostles at Pentecost so they could speak to all people. He whose Father so love the world\u2014the whole world\u2014that He sent His Son to save it, to die for it. He who said at the Last Supper\u2014as He will say at our altar today\u2014\u201cTAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT, FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT, WHICH WILL BE POURED OUR FOR YOU AND FOR MANY\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n