Send Her Away!

Gospel: Matthew 15: 21-28

The disciples are annoyed by this foreign woman who asks Jesus for help. She is a Canaanite and woman - doubly unclean!  The male disciples don't like women too much.  They didn't like Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman either.  To be sure this conversation Jesus has with the woman is not particularly warm, but it is a conversation.  Jesus rejects the suggestion of the male disciples who suggest that Jesus send her away.  He does not do that.  He engages with the woman in conversation.

In the encounter Jesus discovers a great faith in the woman doubly unclean, a faith he has not seen among his fellow Israelites or in his disciples.  The woman goes away with healing for her daughter and transformation for her own spirit, and hopefully so do we.  How often have we engaged in this behavior of the male disciples.  How often have we sent people away or written off entire groups of people because of our biases and pre-conceived ideas of them.  How often did we reject the path of encounter in favor of our own versions of the path of the fortress.  

Imagine what would have happened had Jesus taken the advice of his male disciples.  The woman's daughter would still be in the grips of her demons.  The woman herself would not have been transformed, and neither would we.  We would remain in our biases and fortress mentalities.  We would use Jesus to defend these biases and fortresses.  Now, we cannot do so.  Jesus takes the path of encounter, the path of transformation every single time, regardless of the person's gender, race, socioeconomic background, or status in society.   

Empty Rituals

Gospel: Matthew 15: 1-2, 10-14

This Gospel passage seems strange to us as we are accustomed to washing hands before meals for hygiene purposes.  Yet, the ritual washings in Judaism have nothing to do with physical cleanliness.  The rituals had to do with interior purity of intention and judgment before God.  The practice, however, became a mere formalism and few knew and internalized the meaning of the ritual.  In fact, the objection of the Pharisees here is that the disciples don't follow the tradition, nothing more.  The meaning is utterly lost.

We ourselves have many such rubrics that most have forgotten and have become empty gestures devoid of meaning.  Take, for example, the practice of dipping one's hand in holy water and signing oneself upon entering a church or even one's home.  Few know that this practice is designed to be a reminder of one's baptism and a recommitment to our baptismal promises.  Yet, how many people just perform the action of of mindless habit, or have invented all sorts of nonsense about its meaning.  

The warning Jesus gives of rituals and their defenders of his day apply in our own.  If one is to partake of the ritual, know and enter into its meaning.  Jesus invites us not to abandon ritual as much as being conscious of its meaning and appropriating that meaning into the lives we live.  How often the hardest of hearts are those so fastidious and rigid about ritual and external practice but neglect the inner meaning that is designed to transform the heart of a person, to illuminate and divinize our negligible love into an ever expansive heart open to all. 

Adrift at Sea

Gospel: Matthew 14: 22-36

After feeding the large crowd, Jesus made the disciples get into a boat and go to the other side of the sea.  There, Jesus leaves the boat and goes up the mountain to be alone with God.  Meanwhile the disciples remain out on the sea between the crowd on one side and Jesus on the other.  The sea grew unsettled and the disciples grew nervous and on edge in the night.  Consider this as our condition and status all so often as ones claiming to be disciples of Jesus.

In the midst of the the darkness and turmoil, Jesus comes across the water to assure his disciples that all is well.  Instead, they grow more afraid, seeing him as a ghost and not real.  Peter then gets the courage to accept Jesus' invitation and walk out on the sea toward him, and for a brief moment he succeeds.  But then a gust of wind comes, the slightest of distractions and discomforts, and he once again falters, sinking into the sea, focused more on it than the Lord.

We hear so much about the "crisis" in the Church and in the world.  It is the constant perseveration of rival camps who use the "crisis" to their political and financial advantage.  But, like this Gospel scene, the "crisis" is of our own making.  Had we joined the Lord on the mountain we would be at peace.  Had we focused on him at the boat all would be well.  But we do not because, in a perverse way, we prefer the "crisis", we prefer being adrift at sea.  Today, however, is a day for us to prefer the peace of the Lord.