327. Eighteenth Wednesday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 301 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Faith leads us to be constant in petition.

The summer of our Lord’s second year of public life draws near. The latest miracles at the lakeside, the spectacular multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the great promise of the Eucharist, have all failed to move the hard hearts of the Jewish leaders. And Jesus, exhausted by the long days of preaching, and perhaps overwhelmed by his hearers’ indifference, goes off with the Apostles to find a quiet place to rest. With this intention, the Gospel of today’s Mass tells us, Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

The small band of disciples enter Gentile territory. The inhabitants of that quiet countryside overlooking the sea regard our Lord as just another stranger. Nevertheless, some of them have already heard stories about the great prophet from Galilee who has been travelling all over Palestine, curing all kinds of diseases and afflictions. The word spreads from house to house and along the shore. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.”

The action of the Canaanite woman is a wonderful lesson in daring petition. Spurred on by her daughter’s pitiful plight, she leaves no stone unturned: she runs, she seeks, she enquires, until eventually she finds the Master and places before him the reason for her anguish. It is her love that causes her to cry out as she does.

There is an air of expectation among Christ’s followers. Jesus is the only hope the woman has of seeing her daughter cured, and the anguish of her voice reveals the pain in her soul. But he did not answer her a word.

Christ is silent. It is not hardness of heart. Our Lord often tests our faith like this, because he wishes to strengthen us in the conviction that without Him we can do nothing. Christ’s lack of responsiveness to the prayers of those who seek him is an expression of his infinite love, which seeks to make the motive of our perseverance more supernatural. At times Jesus keeps silent; he allows us to feel like strangers and exiles. We may even imagine that our Lord does not hear us; that we are being deluded, that all we hear is the monologue of our own voice. We find ourselves, as it were, without support on earth and abandoned by heaven. It may seem to us that the Gospel scene is being repeated in our lives.

The Canaanite woman doesn’t get discouraged. She beseeches him again and again. At times, when we want something really important, our Lord wants us to pray for it for many years: a prayer composed of supplication and work, of striving to fulfil his commandments and abandonment to his merciful designs; a prayer of our entire existence, which makes us more humble and draws us closer to Christ, because we discover that he is our only recourse.

We have to pray even though it may seem that God is not listening to our plea.

The first condition for prayer is perseverance. When our Lord seems to be hiding and our petition seems to go unanswered, that is the time to cry out more resolutely and urgently, like that woman who, faced with the Master’s apparent coldness, persisted in her request with the humble reply: yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.

Humble, confident, constant petition. Everything has its time. Our Lord knows perfectly well what our needs are, yet he wants us to ask with the same persistence as the people in the Gospel: Domine, si vis, potes me mundare (Lord, if you will, you can make me clean); Domine, ut videam (Lord, let me receive my sight). Ask the same way they did: they asked him for everything. I won’t say that man’s life should be spent in nothing but asking, for there are times when one sees the need to abandon oneself and one ceases to ask, but later on one comes back to it. Nowadays, I ask a lot. I keep on asking. After having abandoned myself in God’s hands for years, I now consider it better to ask.

I am moved by seeing how trustingly the people closest to our Lord treated him. Do you remember that Gospel passage? Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, Jesus said; and Martha and Mary couldn’t forgive him for delaying. They said: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. My children, see what kind of greeting this is! How confidently, how affectionately they talk to him! Prayer leads to that sort of familiarity!

Our Lord always gives in to those who approach him with the desire to please him. His heart is moved when we place in his hands all our needs, desires and worries. Before the insistent supplication of the Canaanite woman his apparent initial coldness changes to open admiration. “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

As you read the Gospel, don’t take it for granted. In it you can learn how to get to know Jesus better. St John tells us that if he wanted to write down everything our Lord did and taught, it would take more books than all the world’s libraries could hold. The Evangelists have given us enough to enable us to get to know Christ, and the Father and the Holy Spirit; as well as the Mother of God, who goes almost unnoticed, and St Joseph, who goes completely unnoticed. How marvellous!

Christ is always close by, although at times we don’t see him. He is continually listening to us, and lovingly watching us, in spite of the fact that we may not “feel” anything. We ought, therefore, to persevere confidently in our prayer. The more difficulty we experience in obtaining what we desire, the more firmly we must believe that God will grant it to us. And if we are waylaid, assaulted by the temptation of discouragement, opposition, struggle, tribulation, a new dark night of the soul, the Psalmist places on our lips and in our minds these words: “I am with you in the time of trial.”

The characteristics our faith ought to have so that our Lord listens to us.

The one insurmountable obstacle to humble and confident prayer is pride in any of its manifestations: the attitude of asking in a “demanding” way, as if one had the right to be heard; or foolish earthly presumption, which undermines true supernatural hope in God’s goodness.

Commenting on a Gospel passage just preceding the cure of the Canaanite woman’s daughter, our Father wrote: To that crowd who followed him, after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, Jesus says: Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. The miracles our Lord works have this principal purpose: manifesting his divinity, so that we have faith. Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what signs do you do, that we may see, and believe you?”

If the will to believe, the humble disposition of soul, is missing, God’s wonders are not manifest; the intellect moves in a featureless two-dimensional plane, devoid of supernatural meaning. And so, when Jesus speaks to them about the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, they are still thinking about earthly bread. They said to him, “Lord, give us this bread always.” And when he proposes to them the mystery they ought to believe, in its exact terms, without any possibility of missing its objective supernatural content, when he demands of them the theological act of faith (giving them at the same time sufficient grace to believe), they begin to scatter. After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, “Will you also go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

For you and for me, I now ask for the faith of Peter, quae per caritatem operatur: which works inspired by love. A living faith, unbreakable, unhesitating, undiluted, without shadow: operative.

Our faith has to be solid, persevering, humble, hopeful. These are the requirements for prayer of petition to be effective, because our Lord wants to strengthen in us the certainty that we need him for everything. If we ask with faith like this, everything we request will be granted, although our Lord may choose at times to test the steadfastness of our petition.

Let us turn to our Blessed Lady, Teacher of prayer, asking her to show us how to pray with the humble trust of a child of God.