Canaanite woman & Jesus

18th Week OT(Wed): Matt 15.21-28
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory


When I told my parents that I wanted to become a Catholic at 17, my mom said, “But we don’t believe in praying to statutes!” My friends and classmates rehearsed the familiar list of objections to our ancient faith as well. All of these objections, predictably, focused on the various errors Catholicism teaches about access to God—access by praying to the saints, by vain and repetitious prayers, by good works, etc. They were deathly afraid that I was exchanging the only legitimate, sure means of access to God—my faith—for something illegitimate, and deeply, deeply suspicious—flashy religious theatre, complete with script and costumes.

I knew then and I know now that they are dead wrong. And I hope you do as well! If, however, we need reminding that Catholic prayer is first and foremost about living in trust and humility, we have this gospel’s story of the Canaanite woman. To be clear: this is not a story about a pagan woman teaching Jesus about his ministry. I have trouble thinking that the Incarnated Son of God needs a human to enlighten him about his job as the Christ. This is, however, a story about how the Canaanite woman and Jesus work together to teach the apparently ever-clueless disciples about evangelization and prayer.

So, what does this pagan woman and Jesus teach the disciples? Follow the story. The woman comes to Jesus and his disciples frantic with worry about her daughter. She is a pagan, a foreigner, a dog yet she rightly proclaims Jesus “Lord” and “Son of David.” She manages to recognize Jesus for who he really is. When she calls out to Jesus for help—“Have pity on me, Lord”—he remains silent. It is as if he’s waiting to see how his disciples will handle this pagan dog of a woman. Predictably, they tell Jesus to send her away. He then reflects back to them their own understanding of his ministry: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Notice her response to this: not a protest against being excluded, not an assertion of her rights to be included, but a simple plea in total trust: “Lord, help me!” You can almost see Jesus looking over his shoulder at his disciples—checking to see if they are paying attention—before he says, “I can’t give the children’s food to dogs.” I can’t give pagans access to God. But she insists that even dogs get table scraps on occasion. “Woman, great is your faith.” And her daughter is healed.

If the disciples were paying attention here’s what the woman and Jesus taught them about access to God, about prayer: 1) b/c prayer is a relationship btw creature and Creator, we must know and proclaim that Jesus is Lord; trust is the way we tell God that we know He can and will help us; 2) prayer is not about negotiating with God, or casting spells to manipulate God, or an argument to change God’s mind; it is about standing in awe and saying, “Lord, help me;” it is about the sincere expression of our need; 3) prayer is not an arrogant assertion of our rights; prayer is not about blackmailing God into giving us goodies; prayer must come out of humility—a firmly planted understanding of our creatureliness, our total dependence on God…humility is not about being a worm or even a dog! It’s about knowing that you are a willful act of divine creation, the deliberate creation of a loving Creator.

Now, the disciples know what the Canaanite woman knew: when we proclaim Jesus Lord, tell him what we need in trust and true humility, we step into a life lived in prayer and begin again and again to make new our commitment to preaching the Gospel. Prayer is the engine of our evangelization. And it is our progress, always our progress!, in healing and in holiness.