OUR FAITH IS MEANT TO ENRICH US AND EVERYONE WE MEET

My house will be a house of prayer for all the peoples. Isaiah spoke these words centuries before Jesus was born at a time when his people, the ones who delighted at being chosen by God to do a special task, were once again displaced people living in a foreign land where they had been taken after once again been overrun by invaders. The faith they had in God who had led Abraham from present day Iran to the shores of the Mediterranean sea, present day Palestine-Israel, was a faith they were to share with others.

With the birth of Jesus this light for all peoples, this saviour for all, was captured by St Matthew in his prehistory account of the wise men coming from the east to bring gifts to the infant king. Curiously though in the exchange between Jesus and the pagan woman with the possessed daughter Jesus seemed to be seeing the woman as somehow off-limits from his mission. His off-handed response is meant by her persistence. Even if she was caught off-guard by his comments about only being sent to his own Jewish brothers and sisters, she recognises in him what God had intended the whole Jewish race to be, a light for all peoples in the world. The pagan woman saw in Jesus one who could set her daughter free from the demon that was making the little girl’s life a misery. Confronted with the strength of the faith of the woman Jesus delivers the girl from the evil that has taken up home in her.

Many people in our world need freedom from what makes their lives a misery for themselves and others. Whether it is those who suffer from depression that can tempt people to end their lives as an escape from the misery or those who can trapped by murderous disregard of others like those causing havoc in overseas countries, all these people need the freedom that only faith in Christ can bring.

Never think of yourself as helpless in the face of personal or global personal crises. Praying for these people, fasting for them is what can set them free and help them see life in a new perspective, the one Christ gives us. Evil will be overcome because Christ is with us but we must do our part.

Fr Adrian Farrelly