Persistent Faith – Memorial: St. Dominic
(Jer 31:1-7; Jer 31:10-13; Mt 15:21-28)
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There is a very significant faith process at work in the readings today.
First, we have the familiar pattern of God’s unconditional and faithful love in the face of Israel’s infidelity. Jeremiah presents God’s promise to ransom and restore the remnant of Israel – to forgive and heal her. Israel’s response to that love is to be joyful praise and worship; to be obedient sheep led by their shepherd.
In the gospel, we see that schema being stretched to be more inclusive. Jesus, although he goes to the pagan territory of Tyre and Sidon, tries to be faithful to the original, limited plan of his two-fold mission to Israel – to redeem and sanctify her alone.
However, he runs into one of only two persons in all the Gospels who are described as having great faith, this Canaanite woman, and the centurion who told Jesus the words we imitate at every Eucharist, “Speak but the word and my servant will be healed.”
The Canaanite woman
This is an extra-ordinary process and event. In his effort to stay faithful to his Israel-alone mandate, Jesus rebuffs the woman’s pleas three times: ignoring her; claiming to have come first to Israel alone, and gently referring to her as a puppy that should not eat at the table.
What is extraordinary is that her humble and persistent faith in Jesus as both Lord and Son of David (both titles that Israel should have responded to but did not) and her comment that even little dogs ate the crumbs that fell from the table, penetrated that hard shell of an official mandate, reached through to Jesus’ heart, and influenced him to change his mind and heal her daughter. One could say Jesus was not only influenced, but even converted by her, a pagan woman. Surely this story, told by Matthew to his fellow Jews, was meant to shock them out of their complacency and see themselves and Jesus in a different light.
We have contemporary examples of this happening in our own day. Bishop Samuel Ruiz in Chiapas came to evangelize and convert the Indigenous peoples of his diocese, but they influenced and converted him, leading him to write a book about that experience. His successor, Bishop Raul, came, saw what was happening in the Diocese of San Cristobal, the beauty of the process of Indigenous theology, and was converted profoundly, to the point that he was moved to a northern diocese where there were no Indigenous people.
Statue of Bishop Samuel Ruiz in museum built by the people in his honour
Bishop Raul at a ceremony honouring rights activists
There is also Bishop Oscar Romero, considered a safe choice by the elite establishment of San Salvador – the government, church and military – yet was radically converted by the plight of the poor he encountered and that of his priests – a conversion that made him a martyr to the poor.
Archbishop Oscar Romero
Today, the church honors St. Dominic de Guzman who also had that humble persistent faith in Jesus. Born in Caleruega, Spain, around 1172, Dominic began his priestly life in Osma as a cathedral canon. In 1205, he and bishop Diego of Osman were sent to France to combat the Albigensian heresy. The Albigensians believed that all matter was evil and all good resided solely in the spiritual realm. Dominic worked tirelessly to defend the truth of the Incarnation. Lived in poverty and prepared with great diligence.
By 1216, Dominic had founded the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and soon had houses in all the university cities in Europe. The priests were highly educated and could be sent where the need was greatest, fighting heresy and preaching the importance of the sacraments. Stressed education, poverty, community life while being involved in the world, contrary to the rich Benedictine monasteries of the time. The Friars had a lasting impact on mediaeval Europe fighting heresy and stressing the importance of the sacraments and altered the course of well thought out and rational response to the new learning that was appearing as Aristotle was becoming known again in the Christian West. Dominic himself walked from city to city, preaching and inviting vocations. When he died at Bolognas in 1221, the order had already begun to flourish. He was canonized in 1234 and is a patron saint of the Dominican Republic, astronomers, scientists and the falsely accused.
These readings call us to have that same humble and persistent faith in Jesus; to come to him for forgiveness and healing, and to respond with joyful worship and a commitment to justice.
The Eucharist is our food for that journey, an experience of forgiveness and healing, and a commitment to go out to the world to be a source of both healing and joy.
Whenever we have any problems we would go to Jesus by asking him to pray for us and ask him what to do. If we committed any sins we would ask him to forgive us through reconciliation and do repentance. There is certain problems that is hard to resolve or we do not know what to do. So, we would pray from our hearts and ask God to help us and hopefully he can find ways to reduce the problem and resolve it. If we believe and trust this true God then we will be helped. Just like the charismatic pray meetings there is certain people asking us to heal them and pray over them because their problems gets even worse. There is a person who is overloaded with stress, pressure, anger , resentments because of family issues and he or she wants what is best for their family. There is a family member who sick with mental problems, decided to walk the wrong path and unwilling to return to God. Their parents is loaded with stress, anger, stubbornness and pressure due their child. A number of us were trying to pray for these two by calling the Holy Spirit to help and healed them from their problems. Amen . Blessings!
There was a child is pretty sick with many syndromes and disabled; her mother keeps on praying for her so she would be more stable. Her mother came to the point that her daughter is not improving and becoming worse. She does not know what to do and she is also becoming sick for watching over her 24/ 7; she couldn’t sleep at all. Her daughter is having seizures consistently and other sickness. So her mother urged us to pray for daughter and herself as a mother during charismatic prayer meeting. But, there are certain people who have been forgiven for their sins and cured for their sickness for believing in God and having persistent faith. Amen . Rejoice !
Thanks Bishop Lavoie for the messages and homily about being able to heal people with joy and forgiving them . Thanks for sharing those pictures. Merci. Bravo!