You would think that believing that Jesus is God among us would be the hardest thing. But it is not. It turns out that the hardest thing is to believe that God's work - this dazzling creation, this astonishing salvation, this cascade of blessings - is all being worked out in and under the conditions of our
humanity: at picnics and around dinner tables, in conversations and while walking along roads, in puzzled questions and homely stories, with blind beggars and suppurating lepers, at weddings and funerals.
- Eugene Peterson, Why Spirituality Needs Jesus (God at work amidst the ordinary things of life . . . offer your day to God's care.) |
Gn 2:18-25; Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5 Mk 7:24-30 Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, "Let the children be fed
first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."
She replied and said to him, "Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."
Then he said to her, "For saying
this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter."
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. Reflection on the Scriptures
I love the Gospel reading. Some folks think that this passage shows how Jesus
comes to the realization that his ministry is not just for Jews but for Gentiles, too. I don’t understand it that way. A Greek comes to Jesus and wants him to heal her daughter. Jesus tests her to see what kind of faith she has. It’s not right to take food prepared for the children and throw it to the dogs, Jesus says. To Jews, non-Jews were dogs. Not all people have the same view of dogs as we generally do. I have a friend who came to know Cardinal Francis Arinze. His eminence grew up in
Nigeria. Once he visited my friend’s home. On entering and seeing their dog he said, “What is that dog doing in your house?” Alan explained to him that it was a family pet. This Greek woman agreed with Jesus that the children’s food should not be thrown to the dogs but that even the dogs get the scraps that fall from the table. To her, Jesus’ healing of her daughter was like a scrap falling from the table. A scrap that falls on the floor is no big deal. Jesus, this would be like nothing for you
to heal my daughter. That is faith. I quite imagine Jesus smiling as he tells her that the scrap has fallen, and the dog has eaten it – her daughter is healed. To us, God’s blessings, especially when he heals us, are like a
nine-course meal. To God, his blessings take as much effort as we would take if a scrap fell from the table. No big deal. God loves and blesses his children. by George Butterfield
The Existence of God by Francois Fenelon SECTION XXXV
- Of the organs
Within the enclosure of the ribs are placed in order all the great organs such as serve to make a person breathe; such as digest the aliments; and such as make new blood. Respiration, or
breathing, is necessary to temper inward heat, occasioned by the boiling of the blood, and by the impetuous course of the spirits. The air is a kind of food that nourishes the animal, and by means of which he renews himself every moment of his life. Nor is digestion less necessary to prepare sensible aliments towards their being changed into blood, which is a liquor apt to penetrate everywhere, and to thicken into flesh in the extreme parts, in order to repair in all the members what
they lose continually both by transpiration and the waste of spirits. The lungs are like great covers, which being spongy, easily dilate and contract themselves, and as they incessantly take in and blow out a great deal of air, they form a kind of bellows that are in perpetual motion. The stomach has a dissolvent that causes hunger, and puts man in mind of his want of food. That dissolvent, which stimulates and pricks the stomach, does, by that very uneasiness, prepare for it a
very lively pleasure, when its craving is satisfied by the aliments. Then man, with delight, fills his belly with strange matter, which would create horror in him if he could see it as soon as it has entered his stomach, and which even displeases him, when he sees it being already satisfied. The stomach is made in the figure of a bagpipe. There the aliments being dissolved by a quick coction, or digestion, are all confounded, and make up a soft liquor, which afterwards becomes
a kind of milk, called chyle; and which being at last brought into the heart, receives there, through the plenty of spirits, the form, vivacity, and colour of blood. But while the purest juice of the aliments passes from the stomach into the pipes destined for the preparation of chyle and blood, the gross particles of the same aliments are separated, just as bran is from flour by a sieve; and they are dejected downwards to ease the body of them, through the most hidden passages, and the
most remote from the organs of the senses, lest these be offended at them. Thus the wonders of this machine are so great and numerous, that we find some unfathomable, even in the most abject and mortifying functions of the body, which modesty will not allow to be more particularly explained.
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