Fr. Paul D. Williams, Jr., pastor, St. Joseph's, Dalton GA
One of the most famous mothers in the early church was Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine. Her son was a wayward young man for many years, but she never ceased praying for his conversion, nor did she cease in enlisting the aid of wise and holy people to try to dissuade her son from his errors. One day, she was imploring her bishop, St. Ambrose, to do something, and he said, “Go your way Monica; as sure as you live, it is impossible that the son of such tears should perish.” And indeed, St. Augustine later converted and become one of the greatest of the Fathers of the Church. He would write later, “If I did not perish in error, it was due to the daily tears of my mother, who was so full of faith.”
I imagine that St. Monica was familiar with the story of the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel, for this story is a perfect allegory for the importance of prayer, and it teaches us several things we need to know about prayer if our prayer is to be fruitful.
First, it is important to realize who you are praying to. She presented herself to Jesus and cried out to him, “Lord, Son of David.” By calling him “Lord”, she used the hebrew word which was only used by the Jews to address Yahweh, or God. She first recognized his divinity. Then she recognized his humanity, calling him “Son of David.” With that brief title, she recognized the great truth of our salvation: that the Word became Flesh, the Son of God became one of us in order to free us from our sins. And it is only through him that we have salvation, indeed, only through him that we can pray, for he was the one who taught us to call God “Our Father”. The new catechism says this, (CCC 2664) “There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray ‘in the name’ of Jesus. The sacred humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father.”
The second thing that the Canaanite woman teaches us about prayer is that prayer is especially pleasing to the Lord if you consider other’s needs before your own. She came to the Lord and said, “Have pity on me, my daughter is terribly troubled by a demon.” Her only concern was the welfare of her daughter, and she had such empathy that her daughters needs became her own needs, “Have pity on me” not “have pity on my daughter”. St. John Chrysostom puts it this way, “Necessity obliges us to pray for ourselves. Fraternal charity obliges us to pray for others. God finds the prayer motivated by charity to be more meritorious than the prayer motivated by necessity.” (ICG, v4, p394) Perhaps St. Monica prayed in the same way, “Lord, have pity on me, for my son has truly gone astray.”
But also in today’s story from the Gospel, we see that at first, the Lord delayed in answering the woman’s prayer. St. Monica also prayed for years, and I can imagine that each of us have turned to heaven and wondered why it seemed that the Lord wasn’t listening or was delaying his answer. Well, one characteristic of prayer is that it must be patient and perseverant. In many of our Lord’s parables he taught us the necessity of what St. Paul says, “Praying without ceasing.” Remember the widow who kept asking the judge for a ruling in her favor, and it was eventually granted because of her persistence (Luke 18)? And remember the man who went and knocked on his friends door late at night and wouldn’t go away until he got the bread he needed? Persistence is a necessary component of prayer. Without it, you’re telling the Lord that your need isn’t that important after all.
And another lesson on prayer from today’s story: if our need is really important, we should enlist help. The Canaanite woman apparently asked the disciples first, so that they would present her petition to the Lord. And she was so persistent that they eventually went to the Lord and said, “Get rid of her Lord. She keeps shouting after us.”
In other words, “Grant her request already, so she’ll leave us alone.” And that, I believe is a perfect image of the Communion of Saints. Jesus delayed his answer until the disciples interceded for her. And, indeed, the Saints in heaven are constantly interceding for us and if we invoke their intercession, then we gather those “two or three” whom the Lord said would be necessary for him to be present and then grant whatever they ask.
So, prayer in communion, with others here on earth and with the Saints, is especially important. But the most important communal prayer is that of worship. When the Canaanite woman finally came forward, the Gospel says that she “did him homage.” She expressed her petition in the context of worship. You know, I can’t tell you how many men have told me that they don’t go to church anymore because they pray to God while they’re outside in nature. And, of course, what that means is that they’d rather be fishing on Sunday mornings. We used to have a joke in the seminary: Can you fish while praying? And the answer was “no.” Can you pray while fishing? And the answer was “yes.” In other words, when you’re supposed to be praying, you shouldn’t be fishing, but when you’re fishing, it’s perfectly OK to pray. If your prayers are to be fruitful, they should first and foremost be in the context of Christian worship, which, for us, is the Mass. Prayer in other contexts is fine and wonderful, but worship with the Christian community is of prime importance.
And that is the most important thing to learn from today’s Gospel, for we, as a community, are gathered to celebrate the greatest prayer of all, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I imagine that there are a lot of mothers out there today praying for their sons. I wonder how many sons are praying for their mothers today? When St. Monica was dying she told her son, “Bury my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern. One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” In other words, her dying wish was to be remembered in prayer at the Mass, which St. Augustine most certainly did.
And so today, if we bring all of our prayers and unite him to his sacrifice on Calvary, re-presented here at the Mass, and if we pray like the Canaanite woman did: with persistence and patience, considering others needs before our own, invoking the Saints in the context of worship, and uniting ourselves to the Sacred humanity of our Lord – then we can be confident that the Lord will hear our prayer and say to us, “You have great faith; your wish will come to pass.”
