In today’s passages we encounter the prickly theme of “choseness.” Does God have favorites? Is there really a chosen nation, a chosen people? If God is the Creator of us all, how can this be? Not easy questions to confront or to answer. Not when we now know what terrible acts have been perpetrated by…

Have you ever felt as desperate as the Caananite woman in today’s gospel? Emotions seem to explode from us when we’re desperate. We’ve all seen pictures on the television of women and men wailing with grief over their children slaughtered in a bomb attack in the Middle East. They often collapse in unbearable pain over…

Try as we may, we do not always find ourselves comfortable when we are among people we don’t know. Visiting a new church can be nerve wracking, unless we are among the extroverted class. Even within our own country we find cultural and ethnic differences that may challenge the best of us. Traveling abroad may…

Let us prefer nothing to the love of Christ;and may he bring us all to everlasting life. In today’s Gospel we hear the remarkable story of a Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus seeking healing for her daughter. “Canaanite” signified “pagan” to the Jews of Jesus’ time. The area of Tyre and Sidon, on the…

I first met today’s Gospel a long time ago in a children’s story by C. S. Lewis, part of his famous Chronicles of Narnia. Reepicheep, the bravest mouse of all Narnia, loses his tail in battle. As he bows to Aslan, the Great Lion, the King of Narnia, he realizes the terrifying absence of something…

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a modern day Saint, tiny though she is, perhaps wields the most power of any living person. This is done through humbly serving the most destitute and rejected children of God. In an interview, Mother Teresa once said, “I am but a little pencil in the hand of God as He…