Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The third section of the Book of Isaiah provides the first reading for this weekend’s liturgy.
Understanding this part of Isaiah requires some knowledge of the cultural context of the time. Life for the Jews in this period had changed greatly from the prevailing conditions when David and then Solomon was king.
Neighboring states had swept into and across the two Hebrew kingdoms that had come to compose the political structures of the Holy Land. The two kingdoms were defeated and extinguished.
Untold numbers of Jews had been killed or had died in the process. Others had been taken to Babylon, the capital of the great Babylonian empire.
At last, Babylonia itself was conquered by the Persians. The descendants of the first Jews taken to Babylon returned home, but they were quickly disillusioned.
Living was much more pluralistic than it had been centuries earlier. The Jews at the time this section of Isaiah was written lived amid and confronted religious and ethnic diversity. In Babylon, they had been foreigners in many important ways.
Apparently from this reading, some “foreigners” who lived amid the Hebrews now back in the Holy Land embraced the returnees’ ancient faith or tried to embrace it (Is 56:6). As God’s chosen people, the Jews were expected to observe all required by the Hebrew religion. The prophets and their covenant with God had called them to this. But with pagans living among them, the old support of bonding and commonality were gone.
St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans provides the second reading. Throughout Christian history, the great Apostle has been remembered especially for his outreach to Gentiles, to people not of Jewish birth or religion. His efforts in this regard, and surely similar efforts by his disciples and by others, meant that by the last third of the first century, a significant portion of the Christian population was not Jewish in origin.
It cannot be forgotten that Christianity sprang from Judaism, was built upon Judaic themes and included many Jews, including Paul, the Blessed Virgin and the other Apostles. Known as the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul in this letter nevertheless re-committed himself to evangelizing the Jews. Why? Because God promised salvation to the Jews, and Paul, as an Apostle, is an agent of God.
St. Matthew’s Gospel furnishes the last reading. In it, Jesus was in an area populated by as many, if not more, Gentiles as Jews. Not surprisingly, the Lord met a Canaanite woman who was not a Jew. She was an outsider who sought the Lord’s help for her possessed daughter. In the Old Testament, “Canaanite” was often used to designate people not of the revealed religion. It could even be a reference to people of great sin.
Jesus recalled that the mission of the Messiah was to bring salvation to God’s people. The woman persisted. She believed in Jesus, wanting, and needing God’s mercy for her daughter. Jesus responded to this need.
The reading makes two points. First, this woman, of pagan background and therefore in Jewish eyes woefully inadequate, expressed faith. Secondly, Jesus acknowledged and accepted her faith, her inadequacies set aside.
Reflection
In the Gospel setting, the Canaanite woman was not a Jew and was also out of bounds by virtue of her feminine gender. In the culture of the time, any woman’s approach to a male stranger was unacceptable. She was doubly excluded.
Yet, she went to Jesus. Why? She knew her daughter’s true needs. Three times she pleaded for the help that she knew only the Lord could give. Jesus reaffirmed God’s pledge to the people of Israel but also recognized the woman’s faith. Compassionately, Jesus assured her that her faith had brought about the healing of her daughter.
God’s law is everlasting, as was the divine promise to the chosen people, but God’s love has no bounds.
For those who are Canaanites not by ethnicity but by their sins, hope lives, realistic hope. If they, if we, are faithful with the help of God’s grace, never halting in faith, salvation will come. †