St. Mark tells us in the
Gospel of the Mass that Jesus arrived with his disciples in the region
of Tyre and Sidon. There, a Gentile woman, a Syrophoenician of origin,
belonging to the primitive population of Palestine, approached them. She
lay at his feet and asked him to heal her daughter, who was possessed
by the devil. Jesus said nothing, and the disciples, tired of the
woman's insistence, asked him to send her away. The Lord tries to
explain to the woman that the Messiah is to be made known first to the
Jews, to the children. And with an expression difficult to understand
without seeing her kind gestures, he said to her: Let the children be
filled first, because it is not right to take the children's bread and
throw it to the dogs. The woman did not feel hurt or humiliated, but
insisted more, with deep humility: Lord, even the dogs eat the
children's crumbs under the table. In the face of so many virtues,
Jesus, moved, did not delay any more the miracle that was asked of him,
and thus he sent her away: For this you have said, go away, the devil
has come out of your daughter. God, who resists the proud, gives his
grace to the humble ; that woman achieved what she wanted and won the
heart of the Master.
She is the finished
example for all those who get tired of praying because they think they
are not heard. In her prayer, the conditions of every request are
summarized: faith, humility, perseverance and trust. The intense love he
shows for his demon-possessed daughter must have pleased Christ very
much. Perhaps the Apostles remembered this woman when they later heard
the parable of the untimely widow, who also got what she wanted because
of her stubbornness, because of her insistence.
Saint Thomas teaches
that true prayer is infallibly effective, because God, who never turns
back, has decreed that it be so. And so that we would not stop praying,
our Lord showed us with simple and clear examples, so that we would
understand well, that always and everywhere our prayers made with
rectitude come to him and he attends to them: if a son asks his father
for bread among you, will he give him a stone; or if he asks for a fish,
will he give him a snake instead of a fish?... How much more shall your
Father, who is in heaven...! . "Never has God denied or will He deny
anything to those who ask for His graces properly. Prayer is the great
resource that remains for us to come out of sin, to persevere in grace,
to move the heart of God and to draw upon us all kinds of blessings from
heaven, whether for the soul, or for our temporal needs.
When we ask for some
gift, we must think that we are God's children, and He is infinitely
more attentive to us than the best father on earth is to his neediest
child.
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