I saw a recent twittering about the awful language used by our Lord to the Syro-Phoenician woman in the gospel message this weekend. He said that the food of the children should not be tossed to the house-dogs. Does that mean He is calling a Gentile woman a house-dog. By no means. It seems to me that he is using Jewish slurs of His time against Gentiles to test the faith of the woman. Let’s have a look at the story.
“Jesus left those parts and withdrew into the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon. And here a woman, a Chanaanite by birth, who came from that country, cried aloud, ‘Have pity on me, Lord, Thou Son of David. My daughter is cruelly troubled by an evil spirit.’ He gave her no word in answer; but His disciples came to Him and pleaded with Him; ‘Rid us of her,’ they said, ‘she is following us with her cries.’ And He answered, ‘My errand is only to the lost sheep that are of the house of Israel.’ Then the woman came up and said, falling at His feet, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ ‘Ah yes, Lord,’ she said; ‘the dogs feed on the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ And at that Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, for this great faith of thine, let thy will be granted.’ And from that hour her daughter was cured.”
The Gospel of S. Matthew, 15: 21-28 [link]
The poor woman is clearly not a Jew, but she demonstrates that she doesn’t have to be to earn the favour of the Holy One of Israel. It was not unusual in the Hebrew Scriptures for non-Jews to receive great favours. Elsewhere in the gospel, Christ makes mention of people like the widow of Zarephath, whose son was resurrected from death by the prophet Elias/Elijah and the Syrian army-captain Naaman who was cured of leprosy by the prophet Elisha. In both these cases, the miracle enables the the Gentile (non-Jew) to acquire into the faith of Israel in the eternal God. We may consider that this Canaanite woman of the gospel story became a Christian in due course.
The first reading this weekend is a prophecy of Isaiah. God, speaking through the prophet, says that foreigners (read Gentiles, non-Hebrews, or non-Jews) would be drawn to His holy mountain. I think we may say with the Apostles that this holy mountain is the Apostolic Church established by Christ. This message was not always welcome to Jewish ears: that the time had come for the promises made by God to the Hebrews to be applied to non-Jews. It took a long time for the Apostles themselves to realise this, as is given by the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles. Here, the first bishop of Jerusalem, S. James, upon hearing of the vision of S. Peter (called Simon here) that God accepts non-Jews, and the stories of Paul and Barnabas of the further miracles worked among the Gentiles of Asia Minor, makes declaration of it…
“Then the whole company kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul describing all the signs and wonders God had performed among the Gentiles by their means. And when they had finished speaking, James answered thus, ‘Listen, brethren, to what I have to say. Simon has told us, how for the first time God has looked with favour on the Gentiles, and chosen from among them a people dedicated to His Name. This is in agreement with the words of the prophets, where it is written: Afterwards, I will come back, and build up again David’s tabernacle that has fallen; I will build up its ruins, and raise it afresh; so that all the rest of mankind may find the Lord, all those Gentiles among whom My Name is named, says the Lord, Who is the doer of all this. God has known from all eternity what He does to-day. And so I give my voice for sparing the consciences of those Gentiles who have found their way to God…”
Acts of the Apostles, 15: 12-19
Even today, it is rare to find a Jew who is happy to discover that the Christian Church is Jewish in her constitution. And many Christians seem to have forgotten it. But S. Paul is clear in his letter to the Romans, which gives us a text for our second reading at Mass this evening. The ‘pagans’ Paul speaks to in our lectionary texts today are the Gentile Christians who, in the Roman church that received Paul’s letter, had begun to outnumber the Jewish Christians. For Rome was the centre of a vast empire, which was by far non-Jewish. Paul wishes to create peace within a church in conflict, to establish a spirit of charity between Christians both Gentile and Jewish in Rome. It would seem that the house-dogs of the gospel message also were beginning to look down upon the children in general, who had to a large extent rejected Christ and so forfeited the rewards brought them by Christ as the Holy One of Israel. So, Paul says that Gentile Christians should not despise Jews who do not accept Christ, for they too will one day be joined to the Church…
“If the losing of them has meant a world reconciled to God, what can the winning of them mean, but life risen from the dead? When the first loaf is consecrated, the whole batch is consecrated with it; so, when the root is consecrated, the branches are consecrated too. The branches have been thinned out, and thou, a wild olive, hast been grafted in among them; sharest, with them, the root and the richness of the true olive. That is no reason why thou shouldst boast thyself better than the branches; remember, in thy mood of boastfulness, that thou owest life to the root, not the root to thee. Branches were cut away, thou wilt tell me, so that I might be grafted in. True enough, but it was for want of faith that they were cut away, and it is only faith that keeps thee where thou art; thou hast no reason for pride, rather for fear…”
Letter of S. Paul to the Romans, 11: 15-20
Thus, the losing of the greater number of Jews through their refusal to accept Christ has resulted in the Apostles gathering together more non-Jews into the Church, so causing ‘a world reconciled to God.’ This new community of Gentile Christians he calls a wild olive tree grafted onto the old olive tree of Israel which has been consecrated and revitalised by Christ. And the wild olive tree shares ‘the root and the richness’ of the old olive tree. So, Christians cannot despise their Hebrew roots, from which they draw life. And they cannot forget to pray that they themselves remain grafted onto that tree, for if the unbelieving among the Jews could be branches cut away through a ‘want of faith,’ that could easily happen to Christians also.
So, let us pray for an increase in faith. And let us pray for the Jewish communities, who are still called by the Name of the Holy One of Israel. For, as Paul says later on,
“In the preaching of the Gospel, God rejects them, to make room for you; but in His elective purpose He still welcomes them, for the sake of their fathers; God does not repent of the gifts He makes, or of the calls He issues.”
Letter of S. Paul to the Romans, 11: 28-29
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 