Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 332

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.”

The Lord's initial response to the persistent pagan woman reflects a principle deep in our scriptures. It was well known to Saint Paul and the nascent Church as they set out to announce the Good News to Jews first, and then to gentiles.

Salvation History began when "the LORD said to Abram: 'Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you."

 

Idealists -- that is, those who are devoted to the way things should be rather than they way things are -- think that God should not prefer anyone first. Everyone should be loved equally and simultaneously, just as the sun shines on the good and the bad, and the rain falls on the wicked and virtuous. (Although any farmer who owns more than a few acres can tell you how scattered showers fall differently on different fields.)

If we read the Book of Genesis literally we can see how the idealists' vision failed. God's universal love for all the children of Adam and Eve was universally ignored until He was thoroughly disgusted with the entire experiment of breathing divine life into mud. 

And so he began with Abram, and then Abram's wife Sarai, as he renamed them Abraham and Sarah. He promised that all nations to come would call them blessed: 

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing."

The Church continues to operate in this way as we invite everyone:

“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit. 

Repentance, the sacraments, and solidarity with the Church are entwined like the fibers of a rope and are all the same thing. We are the people of God, the elect, heirs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Salvation begins as we turn away from sin, set out on the Gospel Road, and invite everyone to join us. 

So the Lord's response to the pagan woman should come as no surprise. His mission was to the Jews; and though he healed people in gentile territory, he did not preach to them. Not knowing the traditions and culture of the Jews -- that is their laws, statutes, and ordinances -- his message would have been Greek to them. 

It only became clear to the disciples of Jesus after Pentecost and their missionary experience that gentiles -- and the entire world -- would want to hear the Good News of Salvation; and that his sacrificial death would redeem all nations and the Earth itself. 

Who would believe what we have heard? It is a grace and a glory beyond human comprehension, and revealed to our small brains only in digestible parts.