Aug 20 Sun
The Silence of God and the Faith of the Canaanite Woman.
In today’s Gospel, there is an initial resistance from the Lord, and there is also the unflinching insistence of the Canaanite woman: "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is cruelly tormented by the devil." It is the anguished cry of so many mothers who see how evil has taken hold of their children.
There are evils of the body; but there are also evils of the spirit: people who do not believe in God. And evils of the will: people who do not want to believe because that obliges them to commitment. Driven by love for her daughter, this mother appealed with all her might to the mercy and power of Jesus. But He did not answer her word. The silence of God!
This mother does not protest, she does not accuse, but prostrates herself before Jesus and says: "Lord, help me".
"Ask and it will be given to you..." (Mt 7:7-11). Yes, but there are so many who have abandoned the life of prayer, withdrawing their trust in God when they do not see their petitions answered? What is the use of praying, people say with scorn, when they see that their problems are not solved? The fact that God does not always give us what we ask for does not mean that he has not heard us. This is a frequent mistake.
To want God to carry out our desires would not be to ask but to command. And what do we ask for, most of the time? The removal of pain, easy success, a quick solution to a problem. And our Father God, who knows better than we do what is best for us, lets events take their course because they will bring about a greater good for us. Ignorant or impulsive, we ask for stones instead of bread.
This Canaanite woman is the symbol of the Church that cries out to God, day and night, year after year, throughout the centuries to be delivered from evil. There are stages in her history in which it seems that God is silent. But this is not so. The Church believes in the salvation offered by God, even if evil seems to triumph, as this woman believed, without having seen the healing of her daughter. "Because of this you have said, go, the demon has gone out of your daughter," Jesus said. "And when she returned to her house, she found the child in bed, and that the demon had gone out." Faith makes it possible to see the end in advance.
Listen to the podcast: