20th Sunday Ordinary Time - August 20th, 2023 (Click Here for Readings)

Isaiah’s prophesy is a welcome to peoples from all lands, saying that all those willing to love and serve the Lord will be brought to his holy mountain.

The Israelites, after their return from Babylon and the rebuilding of their temple were told by the Lord to unify and become inclusive with all foreigners entering their homeland and living among them.

St. Paul also began his steps toward unification with the Jews and Gentiles. After scant efforts to encourage his Jewish countrymen to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, he began to have more success with the Gentiles, causing jealousy among many Jews. As a result, more Jews began to convert to Christianity and accept more unity with their traditional foes.

So how should these past events of the ages encourage more unity among our multiple Christian denominations today?

Our Prime Opportunity

My wife Carol and I once gave a witness talk to our parishioners on stewardship. After Mass,
a well-dressed couple came up to tell us how much they enjoyed it. And when we asked them what Mass they usually attended, they said, "We don't worship here. We're Lutherans and were just passing through."

And I thought, "What an opportunity we have as Catholic lectors and other ministers of God’s word to show our church's love for scripture to people of all denominations, because when we do a great job of proclaiming the word, we can help silence the impressions among many Protestants that we are not a scripture reading church.”

The Beam in Our Eye

There are many ways to dismantle the boundaries of acceptance among our numerous denominations. No church or individual has exclusivity to God’s graces. We must all work for unity with those of other faiths, or no faith, that we exclude or look down upon. We have no special right to vet anyone by our own personal standards
.
Our Gospel today shows the beginning of an expansion of Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles. When he saw the faith and persistence of the Canaanite woman in pleading to have her daughter healed, she passed the test of faith and received Jesus’ healing. It was a wake-up call to the Jews who believed they were exclusively chosen as God’s people to benefit from his graces.

The woman cried in desperation and in total trust that Jesus could heal her daughter. She did it with beautiful humility and without making demands. The more resistant Jesus was to her, the more persistent she became. What an example of humble and persistent faith for us to follow!

Let us never ignore the many women and men of Protestant and Jewish faiths with the same depth of faith as the Canaanite woman. When we’re fortunate enough to know them, or at least know of them, they can be equal or even greater role models we find within the boundaries of our own church and faith-based circles.

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? (Luke 6:41)

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