“My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. This statement must have sounded disconcerting to the ears of a Jew, who experienced progressive separations in the temple. Surprising too is the word that Jesus addresses to the Canaanite: «Woman, great is your faith! May it happen for you as you wish ». Behind the impersonal verb – “let it happen” – we must recognize God’s action. The Greek text is stronger, because the verb “will” resounds in it: the Father may do to you as you wish! We pray in the Our Father: “Your will be done”. Jesus reverses the perspective: let the Father do your will! Jesus can say this because he recognizes in the will of this woman the manifestation of the Father’s will itself. This foreigner, in the humility of her faith, has an extraordinary intuition of what God’s will is and conforms to it to the point of making it become his own will. And Jesus, whom Matthew presents as the one who answers (the verb “to answer” resounds four times in the Greek text: vv. 23.24.26.28), can now only answer the word of this woman, because in it he recognizes the manifestation of the will of the Father. Here is a strong appeal to our faith. He asks us not only to welcome the stranger, but to discern in him or her the manifestation of the will of God who calls our life to conversion.

Commentary by Comunità di Dumenza

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey