Expand Your Hearts

From the Catholic Liturgy for the 20^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 20, 2017. Matthew 15:21-28. Theme: “Expand Your Hearts”. In the readings for today’s liturgy, it seems quite apparent that the overriding theme is “expanding our hearts, expanding our mission”. All of the readings speak to us about breaking through our sinful and selfish human tendency to be exclusive and judgmental towards others, particularly if they are of a different race or people or nation other than our own.

In the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, God says to the people through the prophet, “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”  You see over time the Jews had developed that idea that only those who were born among them could be considered worthy to worship the true God, worthy to enter into his house of prayer. As a matter of fact, they became so isolated and self-obsessed in a spirit of superiority that they could not even recognize their own God when he came among them in the flesh as Jesus Christ. That’s what exclusiveness and a sense of superiority can do: blind us to the truth and presence of God in our lives.

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul continues with this theme of expanding our hearts and mission. He hopes that his ministry among the foreigners, the Gentiles, will shake up the Jewish people and make them remember that once they were no bodies among the pagan nations and only by God’s generosity did they become “somebody”.

This message of expanding heart and mission is brought out most dramatically in the Gospel by Jesus himself. What Jesus said to the woman may seem rude and offensive to us 21^st century Americans, but he was simply using a saying common at the time to remind her that his mission as Messiah was to the Jews before any others.  But she basically says to him, “expand your heart, expand your mission for the sake of my daughter!” And you know what? He does.

And so, as always, Jesus gives us an example to follow among those with whom we live, work, socialize or encounter.  Through a commitment to personal daily prayer and frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist, we receive the grace to become more like Jesus, which is the vocation we have all received by Baptism. We are to be like Jesus, not like the Israelites who closed their temples and lives to foreigners.  We are to have hearts like Jesus, not like the disciples telling the Gentile woman to go away.  We are to be like Jesus and expand our hearts so that God’s love, mercy, and compassion may be experienced by all His children.