Thursday of the fifth week of the Ordinary Time Gospel: Mark 7:24-30 The shrewdness of the Syrian Phoenician woman
Today’s Gospel reading from St. Mark tells us that Jesus came to the region of Tyre, where foreigners gathered. There, He encountered a Syrian-Phoenician woman who beseeched Jesus for her daughter. Jesus, moved by the woman’s faith, cast out the demon from the child.
We often live in a state of comfort and ease. In our view, those who serve us with their sweat (such as the waiters in a restaurant who provide service with their physical strength when we dine there, the bus drivers who facilitate our travel when we choose to take public transportation, and the couriers who deliver our ordered goods to us after online shopping) seem to do their duty. When their actions fail to satisfy us, some of us may become resentful and vent our dissatisfaction on them in drastic ways. This is the behaviour of the devil within us.
Today, the Gentile woman who knelt before Jesus, praying for her daughter, stands as a model of faith. When her daughter was bound by the devil, she overcame the divisions between Jews and Gentiles by coming to Jesus and seeking grace for her daughter, having heard of Jesus. When Jesus said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” he meant that salvation belonged to the Jews, not to the Gentiles. The woman immediately replied, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs that fall from the children!” She meant that even though she was a Gentile, she also had a share in the salvation granted by God. Jesus granted her request because of her faith. Her daughter, too, was liberated from the devil’s bondage and regained her freedom, thanks to her faith. This is what the Holy Spirit does when we receive baptism into Christ.
We have been baptized into Christ and united with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, our behaviour and demeanour should be in harmony with our Lord Jesus Christ. Our primary pursuit should be the kingdom of God and its righteousness, following the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God, so that our thoughts, words, and actions may resemble Christ, always and everywhere manifesting Christ’s benevolence and love to the world. Amen.
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