Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - A August 17, 2008

Isaiah 56: 1, 6-7 Romans 11: 13-15, 29-32 Matthew 15: 21-28

When we grow up in a certain setting or environment, we easily develop the thinking that the way things happen around us are pretty much the way things are. We take our own individual experiences pretty much for granted and, in some ways, think that the rest of the world or, at least, our immediate world is similar to our own experiences. That is, unless or until we are confronted with someone or something that is foreign or different from our own experience. This may make us think of our own situation and appreciate it more, or seek to change or improve it.

Three examples come to mind. The first occurred many years ago. I happened to be taking a visitor to the city around downtown Cleveland. I recall a remark he made about how wide the streets were. I did not really understand what he was saying until I had the opportunity to visit such places as Boston and Philadelphia and saw how narrow or how crooked the streets in the downtown areas were in those cities. It was quite a revelation.

Another example is evident in the experience of a young person who has the chance to go away to college to live. He or she soon realizes that it can be a very different circumstance to live with a roommate who might come from a very different background or from a very different part of our own country. In addition, the student is now living away from the various restrictions, demands and expectations which were present from home, from family life. Then there is the fact that the student begins to experience greater demands on individual responsibility with regard to time, how to get various things done in life without the easy facility of falling back on the security and so many other aspects of daily life that are taken for granted back at home. This, too, a is great revelation.

Then there is the instance of a couple that is proposing to get married. They may well represent two very different families, two very different backgrounds. The situations for each might represent a single parent home, both parents, divorce, stable environment, and so on. The expectations regarding the roles of husband or wife, mother or father , in a household, and how significant decisions are reached and implemented, might be very different. The new couple that is committing to the partnership of marriage must realize that they are forming a unique relationship, particular to themselves, blending the experiences of both, that needs to be learned and respected.

In the story which we heard in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, as well as from the remarks of Isaiah and Paul, I hear a message suggesting that we think about and realize that the values and the expectations regarding what we are and what we have can be very different from those of someone else and be, in fact very foreign to our own situations.

Jesus, as we are told, is in the foreign territory of the cities near Tyre and Sidon. When the foreign woman calls out to him he initially ignores her. His followers, as they have done before, see a solution to the problem of the woman in simply trying to send her away, getting rid of her. But the woman persists, she gains the attention of Jesus, she gains his response. She appears to see him as more than simply a miracle worker who has rejected her. She convinces him of her faith and trust in him and in who he is. He represents to her a new reality in her life, a healing reality, a restoring reality. She points out that just the “crumbs” of his presence can heal and restore her world, as his presence can restore our world. He is the reality of God with us here, God in our world, God with us now.

There are many different applications of this idea. I would like to suggest one. Many of us have grown up in our Catholic faith. This is our setting, this is our environment. In many respects, we take it for granted. We may not really appreciate our Catholic faith, its richness, its ability to respond deeply to our lives, our history. How, in our Catholic faith, the revelation, the presence of God is experienced in our lives.

The fundamental basis of our faith, along with Orthodox Christians, is found in the sacraments we celebrate. Sacraments are not simply rituals we go through to mark times and events in our lives like birthdays and anniversaries. In our faith, in our belief, these are real events in our lives in which we encounter God. God reaches out to us, at certain times and needs in our lives, and is present to us, as Jesus was present to the foreign woman. God reaches out to us, not just in pious words, not just in formulas and gestures, but in a real presence, being a part of our lives, here and now. God speaks to us through the sacraments, telling us, I am with you, I forgive you, I feed and sustain you, I love you. It is a flesh and blood reality, touching us here, touching us now, restoring us here, restoring us now.

No matter what other religious experience we might have had, in other forms of worship or practice, or in a type of private spirituality that says that practice and participation in sacraments, especially the Eucharist, is not necessary, what is missing? What is not present? The flesh and blood reality of God.

Flesh and blood? Does this sound strange? What, indeed, is our faith, what is our practice? Bread and wine is taken. This is my Body. This is my Blood. Here is where I am. Do this in remembrance of me. When you gather together, I am there. This is our faith. This is our practice.

In Eucharist, as in Baptism, Reconciliation, Confirmation, Marriage and Orders, Anointing - we hear, as in the Gospel today: “Let it be done.” Let it happen. In different ways, at different times in our lives, in the sacraments of our faith and practice (and only if we reach out to them), our God is with us. Our God is truly with us, to teach us, to restore us, to heal us, to love us.