a house of prayer for all peoples

The texts of the Roman Catholic Lectionary today ring out with the message that the intimate relationship between God and humanity is a gracious gift intended by God to be extended to all people. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah proclaims the Divine invitation to all "foreigners" to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants. The psalmist echoes this theme as he exhorts "let all the peoples praise you". Paul tells the Romans and all "Gentiles" of the painful rejection of Jesus by his Jewish people by which he has become the "Apostle to the Gentiles" and through which the reconciliation of the world with God is begun. He anticipates the great resurrection of the intimacy of his people as he reminds us that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable". The episode from Matthew's Gospel has a twist. Jesus appears to be rejecting the petition of the woman because she is a Canaanite. This would be the accepted policy for Jewish religious leaders of the time. These people were outside the "house of Israel" and were ritually "unclean". The woman, in the manner of the patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Moses, argues with Jesus "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table". Father Larry Gillick SJ reflects on the Gospel for today "I grew up in an all white, all Irish, all Catholic neighborhood. I did not know anybody who looked or thought differently from our true and authentic family way. I did not even know there were boundaries. There were just others over there who didn’t matter. They were not wrong, they were not worthy of judging. Jesus was ours and I honestly thought he was quite Irish. Jesus is asking us to hear the requests of the Canaanites of our families, neighborhoods, schools, cities". This may be the experience of many of us and we have perhaps cast Jesus in the culture and customs of our family and community. The "twist" of the Gospel is a wake up for us.