This week, we hear Jesus, not criticizing weak faith, but praising strong faith. “O woman, great is your faith” What made this woman’s faith strong? Her faith is persistent. Her initial request is met with a strange silence from the Lord. Like many of our requests. She then meets some resistance on the part of the disciples, “send her away”, but she persists and continues to cry out, “Lord, help me”.
Also, notice how her faith overcomes the cultural norms of her day. She was a Canaanite woman, not a Jew. Terrific social pressures, like the overwhelming wind on the sea of Galilee, where swirling around in this encounter. A Canaanite approaching a Jewish rabbi? This was not to be done. The Jews considered the Canaanites to be dogs, in a sense. The Lord even joshes her a little bit, knowing this prevailing social attitude. She had to endure the stare of the crowd, the disapproving gaze of the apostles. Yet, she approaches Christ in faith.
Her love for her daughter and faith that this rabbi had the power to help her, enables her to persist, to overcome, and to receive what the Lord wished to give her. Unlike Peter, who sinks into the sea out of fear, she persists in reaching the Lord, and receives deliverance for her daughter.
This is quite the story for Matthew to include in his Gospel. For remember, Matthew, a jew, was pretty predominately writing to his fellow Jews—he was writing for the predominately Jewish audience of the holy land. So, for Matthew to include this story in which the faith of this non-Jewish woman, this Canaanite dog, would have been shocking. But because it is so important, Matthew includes it.
Why? For one, this story would have aided the Jewish audience to accept the fact that they would be worshiping alongside people who did not share their blood. “In Christ there is no gentile or Jew” right? The invitation to Christian faith is made to all the people of the earth—as we heard in our first reading, “The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, ministering to him, loving the name of the LORD, and becoming his servants— all who keep the sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant, them I will bring to my holy mountain.”
Secondly, the story is important for Matthew’s audience because the Jewish converts, Matthew’s audience, Jews who came to believe in the Lordship of Christ, would soon be experiencing social ostracization for their newfound belief. They would soon become the outsiders. Soon, they would be the Caananite dog, the Christian dog who deserve being stoned to death by fanatics like St. Paul before his conversion. For accepting Christ, the Jewish converts would be barred from worshipping in the synagogues, they would no longer be welcome in the Temple. Think about that. They could not enter the place where they had worshipped God since their youth, because they believed Jesus and His Father were one. They would be shunned, disowned, and likely harassed by friends and family because they believed that Jesus was Lord.
Believing in Jesus has consequences. And not just for how we are called to alter our moral behavior, and give up our false gods, but socially. We’ll experience ridicule from family and neighbors who think Christianity is intellectually inferior to their modern secular philosophies. There are certain clubs and associations that Catholics are not free to join—like the Freemasons and the Communist Party due to their ideological opposition to Catholic Doctrine. Increasingly, in our increasingly secular, and even anti-Christian era, being a Christian, being known as a Christian has negative social consequences. And Gospel passages like today’s helps us to remember that, and to expect it.
On Friday, we celebrated the feast of St. Maximillian Kolbe, whom Pope John Paul called “the patron saint of our difficult century” due to his perseverant and heroic faith.
For being a Christian, for being a Franciscan priest, St. Maximilian Kolbe was arrested by the Nazi’s, and without any sort of trial or appeal, was sent to the Concentration Camp at Auschwitz. Talk about social consequences.
Yet, even in that desolate place of suffering, the holy priest was put to work by God; there he heard confessions and celebrated Mass using smuggled bread and wine. A reminder that adversity is not proof of God’s displeasure with us, rather, if we’re experiencing adversity for the Gospel, God is at work! Think of how Fr. Kolbe’s faith, brought comfort and strength to the prisoners there—helping them to know that God was present with them, even when evil was seeming to have its day.
When we remain faithful in the face of adversity, the Lord uses that witness to touch hearts. Even our persecutors will be affected in some way.
You’ve probably heard the rest of Fr. Kolbe’s story—of his martyrdom. One day, several of the concentration camp prisoners managed to escape. In retaliation, the Nazi commanders ordered the execution of 10 men. When a married Jewish man with a family was among those ordered to be executed, Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take his place. The stunned Nazi officer agreed to the exchange. Fr. Kolbe and the other nine men were stripped, locked in a cell, and left to starve to death. After two weeks, some of them, including Fr. Kolbe were still alive. They were given lethal injections of carbolic acid, and their remains were thrown into an oven.
Where did Fr. Kolbe’s courage come from, courage to lay down his life for someone who didn’t even share his faith, where did that come from? Certainly from profound love for God and his fellow man that Fr. Kolbe had cultivated over the course of his life. Certainly from his belief that the teachings of Christ are not just to be professed with our lips, they must be put into practice. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend” is not just an ideal or a pious sentiment, it is a directive, a command: this is my commandment, the Lord says, love one another as I love you.
Just like the woman in the Gospel whose love for her demon possessed daughter impelled her to seek the salvation of Christ, love and faith impelled St. Maximillian to this heroic act of self-sacrifice which continues to touch and inspire our hearts now 80 years later. How do we know of this story at all? Because it must have touched the hearts of the prisoners, it would have been retold among them, and even the Nazi’s must have told each other about this heroic priest. Christian faith lived out amidst adversity touches hearts.
Being a Catholic in 2020 is not easy. Tremendous social forces work against us. It requires great effort to pass the faith onto the next generation, it takes great effort to remain faithful to the precepts of our faith, for we are likely to receive no earthly recognition for them. And it takes great effort to cultivate faith, through prayer, study, penance, mortification, and the works of mercy. But, the Lord chose us to be alive right now, in 2020, in this increasingly secular culture, in order to bear witness, to invite the foreigner, the outsider, into the family of God, and likely even to suffer for the sake of the Gospel.
So may we make that effort daily, again in prayer, study, penance, mortification, and the works of mercy, so to cultivate that faith that will endure the social pressures and earthly temptations, that we may become true children of faith and effective instruments for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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