Aug 12 Sat
Faith leads us to be constant in petition. “And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon’."
The action of the Canaanite woman is a lesson in daring petition. Spurred on by her daughter's pitiful plight, she leaves no stone unturned: she runs, she seeks, she inquires, until eventually she finds the Master and places before him the reason for her anguish. It is her love that causes her to cry out as she does.
Jesus is the only hope for the woman. “But he did not answer her a word.”
Christ is silent. It is not hardness of heart. Our Lord often tests our faith like this, because he wishes to strengthen us in the conviction that without Him, we can do nothing.
Christ's lack of responsiveness to the prayers of those who seek him is an expression of his infinite love, which seeks to make the motive of our perseverance more supernatural.
At times Jesus keeps silent; he allows us to feel like strangers and exiles. “We may even imagine that our Lord does not hear us; that we are being deluded, that all we hear is the monologue of our own voice. We find ourselves, as it were, without support on earth and abandoned by heaven.” It may seem to us that the Gospel scene is being repeated in our lives.
The Canaanite woman does not get discouraged. She beseeches him again and again. “At times, when we want something really important, our Lord wants us to pray for it for many years:” a prayer composed of petition and work, of fighting to fulfill his commandments, and abandonment to his merciful designs; a prayer of our entire existence, which makes us more humble and draws us closer to Christ, because we discover that he is our only recourse.
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