Today’s readings challenge us with considerations of two important virtues if we are serious about belonging to Christ and want to participate in the Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.  As I have been praying with these texts I have been confronted by God’s expectation that I trust in Him and His plan for all the created order. This trust requires that I act with courage in the face of difficulty, suffering, or seeming hopelessness.  Both of these virtues stem from the interaction of Grace between Faith in God as God, and Hope that God will always bring light from darkness and life from death.

In the first reading we are continuing through the Torah readings that we have been pondering for some weeks now.  In the book of Numbers, we hear some of the stories of Exodus in more or different detail, as different writers ponder their oral tradition.  Today we hear a reason why it took forty years to cross the desert.  In biblical numerology four signifies birth.  A call to change as dramatic as birth or death is implied in every four.  Spending four (or multiples of four) years at something is a gestation period for a totally new experience.  This number is rooted in the observance that it takes forty weeks to bring a human child from conception to birth.  In this case, the lack of trust of the princes of the people (symbol for the whole generation) is a kind of dying that will bring the new birth of entry into the land.  The death of the faithless and cowardly generation of leaders is God’s “cause” for bringing His people to an entirely new life in a new land.  A life of courage and hope is their promise.  The older leaders’ lack of trust is the failure of life- God’s life.

In the Gospel, a woman not even of the Jewish people, brings Jesus (and Jesus’ followers) to see that once again God is making something new.  God is going to the whole world with the message of the Kingdom of Justice, Mercy and great love.  The Canaanite women is not part of the Jewish promise, and yet her courage in challenging Jesus on her behalf and that of her daughter brings an entire new message to the community of Jesus’ followers.  God is concerned about the whole human race, not the least those who are trapped in despair.  The language of demonic possession covers illness and attitudes that today we more frequently identify as mental illness, and who suffers more of a sense of death and loss than one who suffers the hopelessness of a world that is meaningless and unloving.

The invitation I heard in these texts is openness to the grace of Saint Ignatius’ “first principal and foundation” of Christian Spiritual life:  God is love, God is hope and God is faith that life is eternal in joy and mercy.  The Victory of salvation has been won for all Creation by Jesus’ death and resurrection.  I must not respond as faithless cowards but as a woman of courage, willing to put up with life’s challenges to be open to God’s gift of perfect life.

A great prophet has arisen in our midst and God has visited his people. (Gospel Acclamation)