Click here to view this Sunday’s readings: http://www.usccb.org/nab/081708.shtmlThis week’s readings focus on the theme of universal salvation, a radical theme in the ancient world where every ethnicity thought themselves exclusively beloved of God. In their world, salvation was only for them, not for anyone else.
In the first reading we see the first promise of salvation for all peoples in the prophecies of Isaiah. The prophet was writing to the Jews suffering exile in Babylon, and this announcement of universal salvation comes as quite a shock to that audience. Can God really save those who have destroyed His Temple and persecuted His people? Isaiah saw what God saw – every single person is a human being capable of loving God if invited to do so. It is our task to avoid getting in the way of God’s grace for others. That way, our prayer can be that of the Responsorial Psalm – “May the people’s praise you, O God; may all the people’s praise you!”
St. Paul reaffirms the teaching of Isaiah in his ministry to the Gentiles and in the words he writes to them in our second reading. He hopes that the conversion of the Gentiles to faith in the one true God would be a sign for the Jews – a sign that the words of Isaiah are now coming to fulfillment. This sign, in the hope of Paul would then lead the Jewish people to conversion as well, i.e. in accepting Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God. That remains our constant hope, for Paul reminds us that God’s call is irrevocable – He will not forget His promises made to Israel, and now those promises are extended to all peoples.
The Gospel reading is perhaps the most shocking passage in the entire Bible. Could Jesus really have been so harsh to the woman? The answer lies in the context of the writing of Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew wrote his gospel for Jewish Christians who took very seriously the promises of God to Israel. Jesus, of course, knew these concerns and uses this occasion to test the faith of the woman as well as the faith of the Jews. We are shocked at the words Jesus uses with the woman, but perhaps we miss the shock of the original audience who would have been shocked at the acceptance of the Canaanite woman. This story confirms the prophecy of Isaiah and the ministry of Paul.
In our own times we need to remember this truth – that God calls us all to one single unity. As the early Church father Leander of Seville said, “Heresies and schism spring from the source of evils, and, therefore, whoever comes to unity returns from vice to nature; for just as it is natural for many to become one, so is it a vice to avoid the sweetness of brotherly love. Let us, then, with our whole hearts be lifted up in joy that Christ has restored to his friendship in a single church the people who perished from love of strife. In this church, the harmony of love will again receive them. Of this church, the prophet foretold, saying, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’” (Homilies on the Triumph of the Church).
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