Now, Jesus can bear it no longer! What He must have suspected about the woman from their first exchange becomes crystal clear. This Canaanite woman, this pagan outsider, has exhibited the kind of faith that even the Jerusalem elites failed to muster. Her humble tenacity puts us in mind of Jesus on the Cross, when He also endured the silence of God and His seeming indifference (“My God, why have You abandoned Me?”). He endured to the end in faith, not despairing of His Father’s goodness, no matter how it looked (“Into Your hands I commend My Spirit”). In this, both Jesus and the Canaanite woman are living examples of what the name, Israel, means: “he who strives with God” (see Gn 32:28). True believers are not put off by what can look like God’s adversarial detachment. True believers hang on for dear life, knowing the goodness of the One upon whom they have cast all their hope.
--Gayle Somers
Image source: Jesus Exorcising the Canaanite Woman’s Daughter, Très riches heures du Duc de Berry (15th c.), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_of_the_Syrophoenician_woman%27s_daughter#/media/File:Folio_164r_-_The_Canaanite_Woman.jpg
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