20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Originally delivered on August 19, 1990
Readings: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28
In this week’s Gospel, a Canaanite woman addresses Jesus and asks for His help. Through her persistence, despite being a non-Jew, Jesus recognizes her faith and heals her daughter. But first, Jesus, in his humanity, rebuffed the woman and, in fact, asked his disciples to get rid of her. In this homily, Fr. Healy invites us to reflect on the humanity of Jesus reflected in today’s Gospel from Matthew. In the first reading, Isaiah tells the Jews, and us today, that salvation is for all peoples. All people are God’s people. We are asked to examine our own lives to see how we’ve practiced exclusion, but then rise to the challenge of overcoming our sins, in the spirit of Jesus’s example.
Weekly Homilies 