RBWords

     I grew up in a small town in northwestern Louisiana where Catholics were a distinct minority, even if slightly more numerous because the town had originally been founded by French soldiers and their descendants had settled in the area.  My mother was a member of the Presbyterian church in town until I was 13 years old, when she became a Catholic.  My father had five half-sisters who were Protestant.  Despite the common catechetical expression of Catholicism as "the one true Church of Christ," my father would never permit us to speak negatively of anyone else's faith.  I knew nothing of anti-semitism because there were Jews in my hometown who had been there for ages, even though they were insufficient in number to support a synagogue.  The discipline of the Catholic church in those days was very strict about even entering a non-Catholic venue.  When I began college, my first dormitory roommate was a devout Southern Baptist!! When I entered religious life, I had classmates who did not know any Protestants! 

     Although the rather optimistic and heady ecumenism that followed the Second Vatican Council has pretty much evaporated, much has been achieved at understanding how God's grace works through faith of all kinds.  The example of the Canaanite woman in today's gospel should make us stop and examine our attitudes toward those who are not Catholics but whose religious faith may indeed be stronger than our own.  We tend to let the sacraments do all the work and take our faith for granted.  An evangelical faith is an intentional faith.  It has its own dangers of feelings of superiority and liturgical narrowness, especially in its Catholic version, but it is a wake-up challenge!  

     The focus in the first scripture and the gospel is on faith being present in "outsiders."  We may easily miss the fact that it is "Jesus' disciples" who tried to silence the woman seeking his help!  If we put ourselves in this scene, what is our own reaction?  Is our faith stronger than that of the Canaanite woman's?  AMEN