“Hope”

In today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 15:21-28, a Canaanite woman who has given up hope for her daughter, begs Jesus to heal the girl. Though the woman and her daughter are outsiders, Jesus miraculously reaches out to them and heals the little girl. This story shows us an image of Jesus acting with grace and powerful compassion. It’s a story that encourages us to have hope.

St. Athanasius was a great theologian of the fourth-century. In a brilliant little book, On the Incarnation of the Word, Athanasius writes that the entire world benefits from the incarnation of the Word even before being aware of it. “You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that house the whole city is honoured and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so it is with the “king” of all; he has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled, and the corruption of death that formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Saviour of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.”

This explains why our hope is valid. It gives us a foundation on which we are able to build our Christian ethics and our Christian life. Jesus is Lord! We have a reason for our hope. The kingdom of God is here! Life that is lived in the light of that saving knowledge is eternal.