The
Woman Who Converted Jesus
I
wished that I was not there! I was on a bus in the south of Mindanao
going to visit the mother of Brother Joe. Joe and I had been together
in community for fifteen years. On his silver jubilee of Profession
he had been given a trip to Ireland. There it was discovered that
he had cancer of the liver. His family had been informed, but now
I was bring the news that is was only a matter of days until the end.
I felt totally inadequate to console his family because, inside, I
was in turmoil myself. I myself could not make any sense of what was
happening and felt angry toward our so-called good God.
When
I arrived at the bamboo house in the middle of the rice fields, his
mother said in the local dialect, "He's dead?"
"No,"
I answered, "but the news is not good."
She
sniffled for a while and then, with all her quiet matriarchal dignity,
said, "Remember this, lad, whatever happens is a gift from heaven."
After
a little while she said, "He will be buried here?"
I
explained how for many reasons it would be impossible to bring his
body back to the Philippines. After another silence she said, "When
you don't see the body, the pain is doubled. But, remember this lad,
whatever happens is a gift from heaven."
I had gone to console and I was consoled. I had gone to bring faith
but it was I who received it. I had gone to evangelize but it was
she who evangelized me.
This
is one of the richest concepts that have emerged in the post Vatican
II Church. Mission is not just to evangelize the poor (whatever kind
of poverty it may be) but also to be evangelized in the process by
the poor.
I
could go on and on giving examples of people who by their words and
acts, especially by their reflections on the word of God in times
of stress, challenge our assumptions, our righteousness, our structures
which we assume are the only channels of God's presence.
The poor convert and evangelize those who believe they have more.
There
is one clear example in the Gospel of how Christ himself was converted
by the poor. In Matthew 15, today's Gospel, Jesus is met by the Canaanite
woman who asks him to have pity on her because her daughter is troubled
by a demon. The woman is poor in many senses. In the culture of her
day being a woman was to be poor, and she was a foreign woman at that!
She has no right to approach Jesus. She is poor also because of her
daughter's plight.
When
she approaches Jesus she puts him on the spot. By instinct he is a
man of compassion but his self-understanding of his mission at this
time is that he has been sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. He
answers not a word; he pauses over his dilemma. He is pushed by the
apostles to get rid of her and he tells her rather weakly that she
is not included in his mission.
When
she comes back at him again he tells her, with the aggressiveness
of the insecure, that it is not right to give the food of the children
to the dogs. She answers him back, "Even the dogs eat the leavings
that fall from the master's table." Her rejoinder is the last
straw. "Goodness gracious!" he must have heard from within
himself, "this woman does have faith! These people can have faith.
I am called to reach to her and her kind." His self understanding
has been expanded by his encounter with this poor woman. He has been
converted and evangelized by her.
We
see the extent to which he was evangelized a little while later in
chapter 20 of the same Gospel when he tells the story of the owner
of the estate who went to employ laborers for his vineyard. Some he
called at dawn, others at mid morning and others at the eleventh hour.
But all were paid the same. In this parable Jesus was saying that
the latecomers, the non-Jews, would receive the same reward, or place
in his kingdom, as the Jews themselves.
What
allowed Jesus to pause, what gave him the ability to reflect, the
sensitivity to be affected by the woman on this occasion? I think
it was the recurring theme, the background music that we hear so frequently
during the life of Jesus. "He went apart to pray." From
his presence to his Father he gained stillness, a poise, and alertness
that enabled him to hear the Father's voice in the voices of the poor.
We
too need to be open to being evangelized by the poor, to hearing the
Lord speak through the poverties within us and around us, to question
our assumptions, to soften our rigidities, to let go of our boxed
in concepts of how God should act. We will be able to do this only
to the extent that we have stillness within ourselves, a stillness
that can be cultivated by saying the mantra for 20 to 30 minutes each
morning and each evening.
Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
