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Some groups are appropriately updating and renovating the evangelical texts!
Jesus heals the daughter of a foreigner (Mc 7, 24-30)
The Partenia group in Dijon sends to us their comments about this text of the Gospel.
The faith of a foreigner (a Greek, a Syrophenician)
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Without hesitating she addresses a determined request because she is confident in his power and his total generosity. She feels his openness toward a person like her, so different: a woman, a foreigner, a pagan, a half-breed and more so her daughter is impure. And Jesus takes away her anguish that she has communicated to her daughter. |
Such a faith, enough to cross all frontiers, traditions, rituals, customs, human consideration, what people can think and finally a faith enough to ask to God something vital for her, has impressed us.
Jesus lets her evangelize him.
Through the audacity of this foreign woman who is coming to disturb him, Jesus discovers the extent of his mission. He turned himself toward the foreigners, but simply without imposing himself. "Like Jesus, let us be surprised, disturbed by those who seem to be out of the table. They can be in fact a source of evangelization if we are opened to them." "I often been impressed by the remarks of the children in the groups of catechism I had in charge. " God is already in their heart".
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When Jesus seems to ignore her, the woman enters into his reasoning. She answers to him: "Yes" because she understands him and she might have an intense look at him. " For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter". Have we such a kindness, a concern, a respect, a tolerance for those we tend to exclude from our "tribe"? Excluded persons because they don't think like us, because they don't believe, nor live, nor practice, nor are made like us. Are we not like the Pharisees at the time of Jesus, concentrated on our own rituals, our definition of pure and impure, of right or wrong, all that seem to built our membership to "the" religion and consequently to the "true" God?
