“O Jesus Son of David have mercy on me, a great sinner who is unworthy to approach your table but nevertheless I throw my myself at your feet trusting in Your Infinite Mercy. Amen.

August 20th, 2017. Matthew 15;21-28. Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

This Gospel marks the only time that we know of that Jesus ever ventured outside of the Jewish territory. Perhaps, He may have needed time away from the leaders of the House of Israel who not only refused to see Him as the long awaited Messiah and deliverer of God’s chosen people but, who also refused to believe that He was the Son of God. Jesus earlier had said that He had come to give His message only to the House of Israel, but by this venture into Gentile territory, He was pointing to His later commissioning of the disciples to preach the Gospel not only to the Jews, but also to the entire world. The Jews were meant to be the first born children of God but then they, by their witness of God’s mercy and goodness to them, were to lead all the nations and peoples to become Children as well.

So here is this pagan woman, a woman who is not only a gentile but also a Canaanite. The Canaanites were not only non-Jews, they were ancient enemies of the Jews. And to make matters even more interesting, women in Jesus day were seen as lower than the house hold slaves. And so in the eyes of many of the Jews, this woman is considered little more than a “dog” on two accounts, first by being a pagan and second being a woman.

However, in Jesus encounter with this gentile, non-jewish woman, we are given an example of humble, faithful and loving prayer before Lord. This woman knows that Jesus is a Jew and that she is gentile; she knows that she is considered an “enemy” of the Jews. Yet nevertheless, she has heard the wonders, the miracles of Jesus and she has a child who is in greet need…and good mothers stop at nothing to help their children-born or unborn.

She is a mother in anguish because good mothers always have compassion on their children and so suffer along with their children. She doesn’t care about herself; she only knows that this man may be able to help her child. She doesn’t care what others may say or even if she makes a fool out of herself. She throws herself at his feet like a beggar and begins to pray without ceasing for this Jewish man to help her child. She knows that He alone can help her, save her child, save Her.

The disciples themselves are ashamed at the way she is acting; they don’t want to be in this pagan territory in the first place, a territory full of sinners and enemies. But Jesus wishes to teach them compassion (not pity-feeling sorry for, but compassion, that is a willingness to bear and suffer with), and so teach them true love of neighbor. Jesus wants them to intercede on her behalf by asking Him to help her, their “so called enemy.” But instead, they ask Him to send her away. However, even after their attempt to rid themselves of her, she for her part only persists the more. Jesus, moved with pity for her, says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.”

Now at first, this may sound like a cruel derogatory remark-it may seem that Jesus too, like the others sees her as nothing more than a dog. But the opposite is the case, because Jesus is looking at the woman with eyes of true compassion and with a warm tender loving smile on his face, which robbed the words of any insulting tone. The word dog that he uses here is not the same word that religious leaders of the day used when they called the Canaanites, the other gentiles and even women “dogs.” No, the word here is more like puppy. In other words, Jesus is showing this sorrowful mother, that He doesn’t share in the hatred, prejudice & lack of compassion of the religious leaders of the day.

But even more, He is showing that not only He is the messiah, but that He is her Lord and God, who loves even sinners—who loves her. He wants her to know that He has heard her humble, persistent plea and is ready to answer her faithful, childlike prayer. And she in return is filled with faith and understanding and responds to His love by calling Jesus, “Lord,” and saying with a trusting, childlike smile, “Lord, even the puppies eat of the pieces which fall from their master’s table.”

This woman of great faith teaches us about the loving characteristics of prayer. She teaches us how we are to pray, what kind of disposition of the heart we must have when we pray. She teaches us that we, like her, must realize our unworthiness to approach Jesus with our prayer, that we must be humble before our Lord and become as beggars, crying out, “Jesus Son of David have mercy on me, a great sinner who is unworthy to approach your table”. This is the beginning of prayer-humility--Humility that affects our actions, our demeanor, even our way of dress, especially at Holy Mass.

Humble Prayer starts with an act of adoration. Just like the woman, we realize the importance of prayer and we fall on our knees-we were given knees for adoring and praying. We humble ourselves, physically and spiritually, in body and soul, and make an act of faith & hope and trust by showing God that we realize who He is and how much we need Him, how we recognize our complete dependency on Him for everything, even to our very existence. We also recognize that we can’t even pray without the Help of His Spirit. And so, we call out to Him, “My God Creator of my soul, Father of my soul, I believe in Thee, I adore Thee, I hope and trust in Thee and I Love Thee, Help me now to Believe, adore, hope and trust, and Love Thee more.”

In our humble prayer, in acknowledgment of our poverty, we come face to face with the gentleness and compassion of Jesus Christ who smiles at us, like he did with the woman, and He lets us know that He Loves Us beyond all our imagining. He teaches us how to pray more deeply and intensely, trusting and knowing that we have a God who already knows what we need even before we ask. Jesus teaches us, like the Samaritan woman, to always be persistent in our prayer and to have trust that He hear us and loves us and desires to answer our prayer, but that His answer must be given in His time and according to His Will, not our own, for our sake not His. And we respond, “Lord, how could we possibly want anything but Your Holy Will, since you alone know what we really need, we beg you, give us only those things that will bring us closer to You.”

Jesus also teaches us, what his disciples in the Gospel missed. He wants us to know that we must pray with each other and for each other. Jesus is most pleased when we pray for others, especially before Him in the Holy Eucharist which is the Sacrament of His love because It is Him! This is the prayer that is the most fruitful. We should pray for those in our families, our friends and those who the Lord has brought into our life. However, we can’t stop there---WE should also, especially pray for our enemies. “What good is it, if you love only those you love you, even the pagans do as much?” We should pray for those who are in the most need of God’s mercy and so in the most need of our prayer.

When we pray for others, as well as our self, prayer becomes part of our daily life by offering up our work and activity of the day, even our sufferings, as a prayer; we become willing to show true compassion which again means not pity but a willingness to suffer with and along side the other. We also, come to recognize the importance of prayer in community, prayer together as a parish family, praying for each other and for others outside our parish family. With this recognition we also see the extreme failure in charity and grave sinfulness of deliberately missing Holy Mass on Sundays, or arriving late or leaving early without a serious reason and not participating lovingly, fully and actively, with full heart, mind, soul and body and with all of our strength and will.

The Holy Mass remember is the most perfect of all prayers. The Holy Mass is the Most perfect of all prayers because it is the sacrificial prayer of Jesus to the Father on our behalf, the prayer of His self-offering to the Father for our salvation-it is the ultimate act of compassion. Because Jesus is God, the Holy Mass is the prayer of God to God on behalf of poor little puppies’ like you and me. Without the Holy Mass no prayer would be worthy to come before God.

It is the Holy Mass that allows our prayer to ascend to the Father because the Mass makes it possible for you and me to come before Jesus, before His table, better yet His Sacred Altar. If we offer ourselves to Him, our whole heart, with trust, and receive him in faith, he perfects our love, our love for God and our love for neighbor for love of God…He makes our love sacrificial not emotional!…At Holy Mass, in fact Jesus gives us His own Heart to love with….The Body of Christ.

Let each one of us take a closer look at our prayer life. None of us can say that we pray enough, including me. Do we pray more than just when you are at Sunday Mass? Do we pray the Mass? Do we only pray when we need or want something? Do we pray for others, especially our enemies? Do we begin each prayer, like this woman of today’s Gospel, with a humble, childlike trust in God, pleading Him to answer our prayers according to His Holy Will? Because in the end that is what prayer really is, prayer is not begging God to change His Mind and Will to ours, but our prayer helps us to change our minds and our hearts to correspond to His Holy Will in love so we can become united to Him in Love and lead other to share in these same union of our heart with His.

So let us all ask the Blessed Mother of God to teach us how to pray, so that we may conform ourselves more and more to the Will of God. In her school of prayer we will learn to pray for others in need, helping them to find the healing that they so desperately are looking for-to find Christ Himself! Through her intercession, let us too, ask the Holy Spirit to grant us the grace to realize ever more deeply, that far from receiving scraps from the table at this Holy Mass, we instead receive at the Altar of the Lord, the Lord Himself, His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Let us become more than “puppies” before the Lord, but His Beloved children and humbly throw ourselves at His feet, and beg Him to bring us closer to Him through Holy Communion, even to a mystical union of perfect love and happiness with the living God. Then we can show true compassion to those we meet, even our enemies, becoming instruments of God’s mercy and love, leading those separated from God and His Love, to this same union of love with the Living God. “O Jesus Son of David have mercy on me, a great sinner who is unworthy to approach your table but nevertheless I throw my myself at your feet trusting in Your Infinite Mercy. Amen.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Transfiguration of the Lord. The Transfiguration is now, thanks to St. John Paul II, one of the mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary; it is the Fourth Luminous Mystery. The specific grace assigned to the Fourth Luminous mystery is the grace of a greater desire for Holiness. Holiness, it can be said is simply “listening to Jesus,” and doing whatever He tells us with the help of His grace.

We have to remember that the historical event of the Transfiguration of the Lord occurred immediately after Jesus revealed to the twelve Apostles, His impending suffering and death—His Crucifixion. It was a devastating revelation to Jesus most intimate friends, who were the twelve future first priest and bishops. Only those who have had given to them the terminal diagnosis of someone they love can begin to understand what the Apostles must have been experiencing.

With the cross now revealed to them, it is then that the fearful, weak disciples climbed the mountain with Jesus. The climbing I think symbolizing the disciples ascending to God in faith and trust—it is climbing the mountain of Holiness seeking union with God. The ascent of faith can then be a difficult hard journey. At the top of the mountain, after the arduous climb, the three arrive and suddenly Jesus is transformed before them.

In His transfiguration, Jesus reveals just a tiny, minuscule hint of the incredible glory of His Divinity shining through His sacred Humanity. For the three, it was literally a tiny glimpse into heaven itself—it was to peak to behold the very face of God Himself glorified in Heaven. How awesome it must have been to be on that mountain. You would think that the Apostles would have wrote volumes about what they saw but they didn’t (they probably fell on their faces and ate the dirt). Words could never even begin to begin to express, for what they saw was a very glimpse into that of which, “eye has not seen, ear as not heard, nor has it even entered into the mind of man…”.

The Transfiguration filled the hearts and the minds of the Disciples with great hope and strengthened them. They had seen the glory to which they were called; they had seen a glimpse of their their goal, their final end—union with God. When one knows the goal, when one knows one’s end, it makes the journey, no matter how difficult, bearable and even joyful. And so, the vision of the Transfiguration would carry them through the upcoming passion and death of their dearest friend—Jesus. It would carry them through as well in their own sufferings to come, the crosses they would have to carry in their own lives. It would also carry them through in their own passion and death at the end of their lives.

But even more so, the Vision of the Transfiguration of Jesus instilled in their souls a great desire for Holiness, to become more and more intimate friends with Jesus, to become one with Jesus. And close to Jesus, they would be full of joy and happiness in this present life, which is so often a valley of tears. With Jesus accompanying them in their climb of the mountain of holiness, they began to experience here on earth what they saw on that mountain—heaven. This gave them the hope that one day they would finally be able to experience the fullness of that tiny glimpse into Heaven they had seen—to see God, to become one with Him and to possess and be possessed by Him forever.

The transfiguration is for us, like the Apostles a important event in our lives as well. The Transfiguration is given to us, as it was given to the Apostles, to strengthen our faith in Jesus and His divinity, to maintain our hope and to increase our love—to strengthen us not only in our crosses, but also in our own personal climb of the mountain of holiness. But how do we make the Transfiguration have effect in our own lives? Like all the mysteries of the life of Christ, the Transfiguration is a mystery not to be solved but to be lived. It is the details of the Transfiguration that give us the answer.

Appearing alongside of Jesus we are told were Elijah and Moses, the two great prophets of the Old Testament and the Old Law. Moses as you know received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai—the Ten Commandments were the Moral Law—the guide for right living in order not only to be happy but to chose and obtain life (set before are two path, chose life).

But Moses also received something else on that Mountain, something that hardly anyones speaks about. He received the Liturgical Law, that is the way to properly worship God, both as individuals and as a community of God’s People (this Liturgical Law from God is found in the Book of Leviticus). The Liturgical Law and the Moral Law are intimately connected. A person cannot live rightly without both. The moral Law give us what we must do to have eternal life, but the Liturgical law shows us how to obtain that which we need to follow the moral law, not only in letter but in the spirit of love, of charity. Right worship, that is offered according to the Liturgical Law, leads us to right living, that is according to the Moral Law and the teachings of the Church, wrong worship then leads to wrong living.

There is therefore the Liturgy to be celebrated and the Liturgy to be lived. As Catholics we can say it this way, we go to Holy Mass on Sundays, and through the divine grace we receive at the Holy Mass, we strive to live the Holy Mass the other days of the week by loving God first, with all of our mind, heart and strength and then our neighbor for love of God—the summation of the Commandments. But the Holy Mass must be offered and attended with great reference and devotion, we must put our hearts and minds into, we must directed out attention toward the Lord—it is not what we get out of it, but what we put into it—the totally offering of our hearts—it is not what we do, but what the Lord does for us-sacrifices himself for us in order to give us His heart.

Elijah the great prophet was the one chosen by God to recall the people back to proper worship of God so they could be one with God and He with them. And so, he was the prophet who called the people of God to Worship God in spirit and in truth, not according to their own dictates, that is not according to their own whims—not for entertainment for emotional fulfillment for the Honor and glory of God. The people of Elijah’s day had fallen into false worship; they wanted to worship God the way they wanted to worship God, not according to the Liturgical Law that Moses received from God Himself on Mount Sinai.

Elijah knew that this improper worship led to improper belief and so improper living—this led to the worshiping of Idols, of false Gods. Elijah took on the peoples false worship and false God’s and false prophets and called them to repentance and conversion—to worship God correctly, not only in word but also in deed, not only correctly in external ritual but also, and most importantly, in full internal participation; in other words, to worship God by offering their whole lives to Him, their whole heart and all that they had and possessed in this world.

In the Transfiguration we discover Jesus did come not to abolish the law (not even the tiniest letter of the law) but to fulfill it. Jesus didn’t do away with the Ten Commandments or the Liturgical Law, but He showed that the both Laws lead to and point to Him. He has come down to earth to do what we could not do, to follow the Law perfectly in love, to worship God perfectly in spirit and and in truth—And Jesus continues to do this for us in the Sacraments of the Holy Catholic Church.

It is through Him, and only through Him that we can glimpse into heaven; it is through Him that we can love perfectly by living the will of God on earth as it is in heaven and so experience the joy of heaven while we still walk in the body on this earth. It is through Him, and only through Him, that we can finally hope to enter into the fullness of vision of Heaven which is perfect unity with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and all the Angels and saints. This is our hope that carries us through the present darkness. But we must leave our idols behind, and leave our false worship behind-and turn toward the Lord.

Specifically then, the Transfiguration points us to the Holy Mass, where we too along with Peter, James and John can in spirit climb the mountain and through the Holy Eucharist see a tiny peak into heaven itself. We do this by Faith…We can see through the eyes of faith, Jesus, who is the Truth, truly present in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is literally Jesus, transfigured before us, in the fullness of HIs Divinity shining through the fullness His humanity, both fully present in the little white Host.

It is through faith in the Holy Mass and the Holy Eucharist, that we can properly worship God in spirit and in truth, that we can with the help of the Spirit offering ourselves in union with Jesus on the Altar to our Heavenly Father as a living sacrifices of love. And it is in receiving ,if properly disposed, the grace to properly worship God as we go forth from the celebration of the Mass, and live the Mass, by following the Commands of God to the smallest letter of law, living the truth with our lives and in our lives—and leading others to this same truth which is ultimately Jesus Himself.

The Holy Mass is where we experience in reality the Transfiguration for our selves. It is where we are able to Listen to Him and receive the understanding and strength to do carry out all that He tells us. The Holy Mass is our Hope for whatever the future might hold in store, for it brings to us and gives to us the One who is our Hope, Jesus the Lord. And, it is at the Holy Mass, by participating with full, actual, conscious and fruitful participation that we are lead to and taken more and more into the fullness of the vision of the Transfiguration, the Holy Eucharist unveiled to behold, adored and love for all eternity.