Monday, August 18, 2014

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle A - August 17, 2014

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Cycle A
August 17, 2014        9:30 and 11am Masses
St. Margaret Parish, Bel Air


What a Story!


Well, that’s quite a gospel!

Jesus’ first responses to that woman are really surprising!  They are so inconsistent with everything else Jesus does.

So, what’s going on here?  How are we to understand Jesus in this passage?

The most likely explanation is that Jesus is the Son of God and is divine, but he is also fully human.  And so, even Jesus has to grow and work through the human barriers and prejudices that can trap all of us. 

The Point


What happens here is that Jesus breaks through the barriers of his day.

Gender barriers – he is talking with a woman when women are viewed as second-class and are not even to be recognized if they are unaccompanied by their husband.  Religious barriers – this woman is a non-Jew, and that’s why she is called a “dog” – the diminishing expression for all non-Jews. 

Cultural barriers – this woman is of a different culture, a different way of thinking and living than Jesus.  And nationality barriers – she is a Canaanite, an enemy of Israel. 

So Jesus eventually breaks through all these barriers.  He comes to see this woman as a person – a mother who loves her daughter and desperately wants her to get well.

Jesus sees her as a person with needs and feelings and hopes like anyone else.  And seeing her as a person leads him to break through all the barriers that we humans can put up between ourselves and others.

A Lesson on Barriers


Is it even necessary to say that we need this lesson in today’s world?

The atrocities going on in northern Iraq with Isis are a tragic example of the evil that barriers can cause.  Thank God, here we have nothing quite like that, but we do have barriers and problems caused by them.

We have barriers based on politics, religion, ethnic group, race, country of origin, and on it goes.  The polarization in our country at least to some extent is caused by these barriers.

We need to go beyond them and see others as persons like ourselves.  If we do that, differences and diversity will not lead to prejudice and hostility.

A Recommendation for Us Catholics


From all of this, I am seeing one recommendation for us Catholics and for Catholicism in general.

My thought is that part of our uniqueness as a capital C Catholic Church must be that we are truly a small c catholic Church.  Small c means that we are universal, inclusive, and respectful.

At this point in time and in today’s culture, this approach is especially needed.  We need to express our faith with this approach in mind.

So I think that today we need to teach our faith positively not negatively and lift up the richness that we have in Scripture and sacraments and spirituality.  We need to lift up positively the way of Jesus in the gospels.

We need to lift up the value of having a Church that has tried to apply the gospel in its teachings through the centuries.  But we also need to be humble and admit that we have been made mistakes especially in the way we have done this. 

We need to invite others to freely consider faith and belonging to this faith community.  But we also need to avoid manipulating or forcing them by saying do it this way or or else eternal damnation will follow.

And with that, we need to be respectful of differences in others and even in others within our Church.  That, I think, is the way to be both Catholic with a capital C and catholic with a small c in this day and age. 

It will be a way of faith that is positive and does not create barriers.  It will be a good example to a world and culture that still resorts to destructive barriers. 


It will mark some of our uniqueness as Catholics in this century.  And, by the way, I believe that this is the way that Pope Francis is trying to instill in us as individuals and as a Church.