The Syrophoenician Woman

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“He left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know that he was there. But he could not pass unrecognized. At once a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and came and fell at his feet. Now this woman was a Gentile, by birth a Syrophoenician, and she begged him to drive the devil out of her daughter.

“He said to her, ‘The children should be fed first, because it's not fair to take the children's food and throw it to little dogs.’ But she spoke up. ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, ‘but the little dogs under the table eat the scraps from the children’” (Mark 7:24-28).

This is a story about humility and perseverance in prayer.

St. Mark tells us that Our Lord and His disciples came into this region of Tyre and Sidon. This Gentile woman approached them. She was a Syrophoenician by birth, one of those belonging to the indigenous population of Palestine.

She cast herself at His feet and asked Him to cure her daughter, who was possessed by the devil. Jesus didn't answer. St. Matthew tells us that the disciples were exasperated with the woman's insistence and asked Him to send her away (Matt. 15:23).

Our Lord explains to the woman that the Messiah must first make Himself known to the Jews, to the children of Israel. Then, with an expression that's hard to understand unless we hear the tone of His voice and see the affectionate gestures that accompany it, He says, “Let the little children be fed first, for it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” Those are pretty strong words.

But the woman is not offended or humiliated. With deep humility, she insists, “Yes, Lord, but even the little dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.”

Our Lord is moved by her great faith and immediately grants her the miracle she desires: “‘For saying this,' he says, ‘you may go your way, the demon has left your daughter’” (Mark 7:29).

St. Peter tells us, “God opposes the proud but gives his grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5). That woman obtained what she wanted. She touched Our Lord's heart.

Here's the perfect example for those who may tire of praying because they think that their prayers have not been heard. In her prayer, we find the conditions required for all successful petitions: faith, humility, perseverance, and confidence.

Her great love for her daughter, who was possessed by the devil, would have been most pleasing to Our Lord.

The apostles, later on, when they heard the parable of the insistent widow (Luke 18:3) who also got what she wanted as a result of her persistence—they must have perhaps remembered this particular lady.

St. Thomas teaches that true prayer is infallibly effective. God has decreed that it should be so, and He doesn't change His mind (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II 83,2).

Our Lord teaches us not to become discouraged or to give up on our requests. He gives us clear and simple examples to help us understand that when we pray with the right intention., He hears us and listens to us.

“What father among you,” He says, “if his son asks for a piece of bread, will hand him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a snake; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? … How much more will your heavenly Father give?” (Matt. 7:9, Luke 11:11-13).

I heard of a couple in Taiwan one time who attended a lot of parenting courses. They had two children, a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old. The ten-year-old son was often hugging the computer and not allowing his younger sister to use it.

He'd been warned many times to allow his younger sister to use the computer, but he sort of ignored these warnings. Then one time he did it again. The parents decided that they would punish him. His punishment was going to be that he was not going to go on the class outing the following Wednesday.

There was a volcano. There was pandemonium. He'd been looking forward to this class outing for weeks and months. It was the event of the year. For him not to go was just unthinkable. This wasn't fair, etc., etc., etc.

The parents were very happy because they realized they'd hit on the right punishment, which served him right. He pleaded and pleaded, but there was nothing doing. The parents had read all the right parenting books. They'd attended all the courses. They realized they were on a good wicket.

The following Monday in class, the teacher asked all the students to put up their hands—those who were going to the class outing. Everyone puts up their hand except little Johnny.

The teacher asked him, “Why aren't you going on the class outing?” “Because my parents won't let me, it's all their fault.”

The teacher called the parents and inquired what was wrong. She heard the full story and then she understood.

Then on a Tuesday night, the fellow decided he would have one last chance. He pleaded and pleaded with his parents to let him go on the class outing, but they said, “Nothing doing, the punishment stands.”

He went into his room and he locked the door. He was there quite a long time, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, and the mother was getting a little bit nervous. She had read stories of children committing suicide in their bedroom.

There came a moment when she couldn't take it any longer. She went to the bedroom door and knocked on the door, said, “Open the door, open the door, what are you doing in here?”

Eventually, he opened the door and she said, “What are you doing in here?” He said, “I was praying the prayer card to St. Josemaría Escrivá.”

Now the mother was put back on her heels. “Oh, my goodness, he's been praying the prayer card to St. Josemaría.” Now she had to call a conference with her husband: “This is very serious. We have been bringing him up to have recourse to prayer in difficult moments. We have taught him to have devotion to St. Josemaría. This whole business of his spiritual growth and development is very important to us. Now in this moment, he's had recourse to prayer, what if he doesn't get what he wants?”

After much discussion, they discovered that his whole spiritual formation was really much more important than this thing of the class outing. They decided they had to relent and they let him go on the excursion.

So, little Johnny got what he was asking for. When we pray with faith and insistence and confidence to all the saints in heaven who are very powerful, God hears our prayers.

The Curé of Ars says, “God has never refused anything. He will not refuse anything to those who ask for His graces in the proper way. Prayer is the great means we have for overcoming sin, for persevering in grace, for turning our hearts to God, and drawing down upon us all kinds of blessings, whether for our souls or for our temporal needs” (St. Jean Vianney, Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter).

When we need to ask for something, it's good to remember that we are God's children. He doesn't refuse anything to His children. “How much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” (Matt. 7:11).

Our Father God takes far greater care of us. The best father in the world takes care of that child who most wants his help. We can try to have great filial confidence and perseverance in our petitions. God has foreseen from all eternity the help that we need.

One spiritual writer says He has also foreseen the assistance we will require and the graces that will lead us to make our requests. He treats us as children who are free and simply asks us to cooperate.

It is as necessary for us to ask in order to obtain God's help, in order to do good and persevere, as it is necessary to sow the seed in order to reap the harvest of grain (cf. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, vol. 1, p. 500).

Unless the seed is sown, the ears of wheat do not grow; if we do not ask, we shall not receive the graces we require. God knows everything that we need, but He wants us to ask for them.

Insofar as we intensify our demands, we identify our will with that of Our Heavenly Father. It is He who truly knows the depths of our need, of our utter poverty.

At times He may make us wait so that we can be better disposed, so that we will desire those graces more earnestly and fervently. Sometimes He says yes, sometimes He says no, and often He says wait.

On other occasions, He rectifies our petition and grants us what we really need. And yet there may be times when He doesn't grant us what we're asking for because, possibly without our realizing it, we're asking for something that may be harmful, something that has presented itself to our will under the appearance of some desirable good.

A mother doesn't give her child a sharp knife which shines attractively, just because the child wants it with all their heart. We are like little children of God. When we ask for something that might be bad for us, even if it seems good to us, God acts just as a good mother will act with one of her small children.

Instead, He gives us other graces that will be good for us, although we might be less clamorously interested in them.

Our prayer can be filled with trust, as when we're asking something from a loving father. It needs to be confident, because God knows what we need better than we know ourselves.

That trust leads us to ask with constancy, with perseverance. Undaunted, we insist over and over again, certain that we will receive more and better than what we're asking for.

We have to persist in our asking, like the insistent friend who needed bread (Luke 11:5-8), or the helpless widow who besought the unrighteous judge night and day (Luke 18:1-8).

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened” (Luke 11:9-10).

St. Thomas comments that this very perseverance in prayer leads by itself to an increase of trust and friendship with God: “And this friendship, which produces the request, opens the way to a more trusting entreaty, as though having been introduced into the divine intimacy by the first request, we are enabled to implore with greater confidence the next time. Thus, when we address a petition to God, constancy and persistence are never inexpedient. Quite the opposite. They are pleasing to God (St. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, II, 2).

We should try to imitate the Syrophoenician woman as an outstanding example of constancy, even though Our Lord seems not to be willing to pay any attention to her.

Our Lord sets no limits to the effectiveness of prayer. Everyone who asks, receives, for God is Our Father.

St. Augustine teaches that on occasion our prayer is not answered, because we are not good, because we lack purity of heart or rectitude of intention. We ask in the wrong spirit, without faith, perseverance, or humility. We ask for things that are bad, things that are not good for us, that could harm us or lead us astray (cf. St. Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount, II, 73).

In short, prayer is ineffective when it's not real prayer.

St. Josemaría says in The Way, “Pray. In what human venture could you have greater guarantees of success?” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 96).

“‘Truly I say to you,’ He says in St. John, ‘if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you’” (John 16:23).

We should ask for supernatural graces. Every day in the Mass, the priest says: Deliver us Lord from every evil and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy, keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety (Roman Missal, Ordinary of the Mass).

In our prayer, we ask for favors for ourselves and also for others. We should ask for the goods and for the graces needed by our souls.

No matter how serious the material limitations or privations that we undergo, invariably we have greater need of spiritual benefits—such as the grace to serve God and to be faithful, to grow in personal holiness, to receive help to win through in the struggle against our defects, to make a good confession, to prepare for Holy Communion.

We can ask for temporal goods insofar as they are useful for our salvation and are rightly considered secondary to the graces and the gifts of the Spirit that we first and foremost have need of.

Our Lord taught us how to ask for things: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11).

St. Paul VI, in one of his Apostolic Exhortations, says the first miracle worked by Jesus, the one by which He manifested Himself to His disciples (John 2:1-12), was of a material kind. “Mary appears in Cana where, when she tactfully told her Son of a temporal need—she asked for alcohol—she also obtained an effect of grace. The effect was that Jesus, in working the first of His ‘signs,’ confirmed His disciples’ faith in Him” (Paul VI, Marialis Cultus, 2 February 1974, Point 18).

If we're living a unity of life, all goods of a material nature will contribute in some way to the glory of God.

The miracle of Cana worked through the intercession of Our Lady encourages us and invites us to ask for graces of a temporal nature that are necessary or that will be of help to us in our ordinary everyday life.

If the Mother of God asks for alcohol, that opens the door for us to ask for all sorts of material things. We can ask for help in solving some financial problem that troubles us, for recovery from an illness, to pass a difficult examination that we've studied for.

St. Gregory the Great says, “In prayer, one person may ask for a suitable spouse, another for a roof over their head, a third for something to wear, another for food. When we are in need any of these things, we should indeed ask Almighty God for them, but we should bear in mind the command of the Redeemer, ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well’” (St. Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels, Point 27).

We shouldn't devote the best of our prayer to asking only for the ‘extras.’ God is pleased when we ask Him for grace and help for others, and also when we ask others to pray for us and our apostolate.

God must be very happy in our periods of prayer when we spend them, fill them, asking things for other people.

In the Furrow, St. Josemaría says: “‘Pray for me,’ I said as I always do. And he answered in amazement: ‘But is there something wrong?’ I had to explain that something is the matter or happens to us all the time; and I added that when prayer is lacking, ‘more and more weighty things are the matter’” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 479).

Prayer is the answer to all these problems.

Our prayer should be filled with a spirit of abandonment in God and a deep supernatural sense. As Pope St. John Paul says, “It is a question of doing the work of God and not our own. We have to respond to His inspiration and not to our own feelings” (cf. John Paul II, Address to the French Bishops during their ‘ad limina’ visit).

Our Mother will rectify for us those intentions of ours which may not be completely sound, so that we always obtain what is best.

In The Way, we're told, we have in the Holy Rosary “a powerful weapon” (cf. J. Escrivá, The Way, 558) for obtaining from God the help we and the people we pray for need each day.

Lord, give to your people the joy of continual health in mind and body.

Throughout her life, Our Lady must have been a source of consolation and support to anyone afflicted by a weight that was too heavy to bear alone.

She must have heartened St. Joseph on that night in Bethlehem when, as he explained their pressing need for lodging at one house after another, he found no door would open to them.

One smile from Mary would be enough for him to find the strength to get ready and make the most of what he had found—a stable on the outskirts of the little town.

She would have been a tower of strength to him on the flight into Egypt and in helping him set himself up in that country.

Joseph himself was a man of fortitude, but it would have been easier for him to do what he must to fulfill the Will of God when he was sustained by the encouragement of Our Lady.

Her neighbors in Nazareth would always find uplift and understanding in her words.

The apostles found refuge in Mary's company when all had turned dark and meaningless after the death of Christ on the Cross. When they returned from placing the Body of Jesus in the sepulcher, at a time when families in Jerusalem were getting ready to celebrate the Paschal feast, the apostles, who had fled numb with shock and disoriented, turned almost automatically to Our Lady.

From then on, she has never ceased to comfort those who are oppressed by sorrow, loneliness, or suffering. “She has sheltered innumerable Christians from persecution, freed many souls possessed by the devil or besieged by temptations, saved countless people who are fleeing to her with anxiety. She has strengthened and helped many of the dying by reminding them, as they lay on their deathbeds, of the infinite merits of her Son” (R. Garrigou-Lagrange, The Mother of the Savior).

If ever our life has become for us a misery and we are overwhelmed by apparently insoluble difficulties, crushed by illness, daunted by seeming failure in our dedication to an apostolic task, if we're threatened by discouragement in the effort to bring up our family and dismayed at the obstacles that just keep on piling up, let us turn to her. We'll always find peace, encouragement, and the strength to fulfill the lovable Will of her Son.

We can repeat slowly: Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail our life, our sweetness, and our hope. From her, we learn to console and hearten others in their struggles. We can be compassionate to those who are in need—people in disasters or in minor worries, a word of encouragement here or of condolence there—with a merciful attitude which is so pleasing to Our Lord.

Our Lady is the Help of Christians because first of all we favor those we love, and nobody has had a greater love than Mary for those who belong to her Son's family. In her, we shall find every grace we need to win through in the fight against temptation, in our apostolate, and in our work.

Following the constant teaching of the Roman Pontiffs, many Christians throughout the world have made the daily rosary a part of their life of piety. They recite it together as a family prayer, or alone in a church, while walking on the street, or traveling in any form of transport.

We’re told in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, quoted by St. Josemaría, “‘In me is to be found every grace of doctrine and of truth, every hope of life and of virtue’ (Ecclus. 24:25). How wise the Church has been,” he says, “to put these words on Our Mother's lips, so that we Christians do not forget them! She is our safety, the Love that never fails, the refuge ever open to us, the hand ever ready to caress and to console” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, 279).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

OLV