August 7, 2013

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Wednesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time 
Lectionary: 409

Reading 1NM 13:1-2, 25–14:1, 26A-29A, 34-35

The LORD said to Moses [in the desert of Paran,]
“Send men to reconnoiter the land of Canaan,
which I am giving the children of Israel.
You shall send one man from each ancestral tribe,
all of them princes.”

God commanded Moses to send scouts into the land to see what the land was like that He was giving them.

After reconnoitering the land for forty days they returned,
met Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation of the children of Israel
in the desert of Paran at Kadesh,
made a report to them all,
and showed the fruit of the country
to the whole congregation.
They told Moses: “We went into the land to which you sent us.
It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and here is its fruit.
However, the people who are living in the land are fierce,
and the towns are fortified and very strong.
Besides, we saw descendants of the Anakim there.
Amalekites live in the region of the Negeb;
Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites dwell in the highlands,
and Canaanites along the seacoast and the banks of the Jordan.”

The scouts went and spent 40 days there, but when they came back, they were scared to death.

Caleb, however, to quiet the people toward Moses, said,
“We ought to go up and seize the land, for we can certainly do so.”
But the men who had gone up with him said,
“We cannot attack these people; they are too strong for us.”
So they spread discouraging reports among the children of Israel
about the land they had scouted, saying,
“The land that we explored is a country that consumes its inhabitants.
And all the people we saw there are huge, veritable giants
(the Anakim were a race of giants);
we felt like mere grasshoppers, and so we must have seemed to them.”

Caleb, who had faith in God, suggested a raid to seize the land from the giants. But the rest of the scouts shouted him down with fear.

At this, the whole community broke out with loud cries,
and even in the night the people wailed.

And then the fear spread to the whole community.

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron:
“How long will this wicked assembly grumble against me?
I have heard the grumblings of the children of Israel against me.
Tell them: By my life, says the LORD,
I will do to you just what I have heard you say.
Here in the desert shall your dead bodies fall.
Forty days you spent in scouting the land;
forty years shall you suffer for your crimes:
one year for each day.
Thus you will realize what it means to oppose me.
I, the LORD, have sworn to do this
to all this wicked assembly that conspired against me:
here in the desert they shall die to the last man.”

And God punished them by their very words.  They claimed they would die in the desert and God made their words come true.  To a man, no one who came out of Egypt lived to see the Promised Land.  Only their children entered therein.

Responsorial PsalmPS 106:6-7AB, 13-14, 21-22, 23

R. (4a) Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

We have sinned, we and our fathers;

we have committed crimes; we have done wrong.

Our fathers in Egypt

considered not your wonders.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

But soon they forgot his works;

they waited not for his counsel.

They gave way to craving in the desert

and tempted God in the wilderness.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

They forgot the God who had saved them,

who had done great deeds in Egypt,

Wondrous deeds in the land of Ham,

terrible things at the Red Sea.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

Then he spoke of exterminating them,

but Moses, his chosen one, 

Withstood him in the breach

to turn back his destructive wrath.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

Do not anger the Lord nor make Him turn away.  Be persevering in good deeds, be faithful in prayer and do not be double minded.  For the Lord has said:

Revelation 3:16  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Hebrews 10:31  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Therefore, do not take God's kindness for granted.  

GospelMT 15: 21-28

At that time Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out,

A Canaanite woman, a gentile, cried out to Our Lord.

“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!
My daughter is tormented by a demon.”

Out of great love for her child, she ventured to cry for assistance to a Jewish Rabbi.

But he did not say a word in answer to her.

He ignored her.

His disciples came and asked him,
“Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.”

The Apostles understood this to mean that He did not want her around.  She was a gentile, after all.  No better than an animal as far as many Jews were concerned.

He said in reply,
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

And He said to her, "I was sent to the Jews, not to the Gentiles."

But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.”

But she was not deterred.

He said in reply,
“It is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”

And He said one of the meanest things I ever heard.  It isn't right to take the food from the children of God and give it to animals.

She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps
that fall from the table of their masters.”

She still was undeterred.  Humbly accepting that description, she said, "Even the dogs get the scraps the children leave behind."

Then Jesus said to her in reply,
“O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish.”
And her daughter was healed from that hour.

And having passed the test of her faith, Jesus immediately granted what she asked.  Her child was healed.

We need to be like that woman.  We need to courageously seek after God in every aspect of our lives.  We closely imitate the woman when we bring out children to Church to be washed of their sins in Baptism.  A great gift which they are too young to request themselves but which we can, in faith, desire and obtain for them because of our own faith.