Daily Mass Gospel Reflection- Humble, Gentile Faith

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 02.10.22 | Aux. Bishop R. Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin

Mark 7:24-30

Friends, our Gospel for today, the story of Jesus’ conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman, is one of those famously problematic passages in the New Testament.
This poor woman, a Canaanite, a foreigner, comes forward and tells Jesus of her daughter who is troubled by a demon. She prostrates herself at his feet, but Jesus says, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

Of course, the woman responds with one of the best one-liners in the Scriptures, almost all of which otherwise belong to Jesus himself:
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
At this point, Jesus praises her for her faith and cures her daughter.

What’s going on here is really interesting and provocative. The Syro-Phoenician woman is being invited into a life of discipleship, into the following of Jesus.
She is resisted, not because Jesus is having a bad day, but because he wants the strength of her faith to show itself.

[MurphsLaw]

+++Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted
no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had
an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a
Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the
demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, “Let the children be
fed first.
For it is not right to take the food
of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table
eat the children’s scraps.”
Then he said to her, “For saying
this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your
daughter.”
When the woman went home, she
found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.+++