Reading 1 1 Kgs 11:4-13
When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,
and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,
as the heart of his father David had been.
By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,
and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites,
Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;
he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.
Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,
and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,
on the hill opposite Jerusalem.
He did the same for all his foreign wives
who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
The LORD, therefore, became angry with Solomon,
because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel,
who had appeared to him twice
(for though the LORD had forbidden him
this very act of following strange gods,
Solomon had not obeyed him).
So the LORD said to Solomon: "Since this is what you want,
and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes
which I enjoined on you,
I will deprive you of the kingdom and give it to your servant.
I will not do this during your lifetime, however,
for the sake of your father David;
it is your son whom I will deprive.
Nor will I take away the whole kingdom.
I will leave your son one tribe for the sake of my servant David
and of Jerusalem, which I have chosen."
Responsorial Psalm Ps 106:3-4, 35-36, 37 and 40
R. (4a) Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Blessed are they who observe what is right,
who do always what is just.
Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people;
visit us with your saving help.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
But they mingled with the nations
and learned their works.
They served their idols,
which became a snare for them.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
And the LORD grew angry with his people,
and abhorred his inheritance.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Gospel Mk 7:24-30
Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, "Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs."
She replied and said to him,
"Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."
Then he said to her, "For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter."
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
Meditation: Mark 7:24-30
The demon has gone out of your daughter.” (Mark 7:29)
What a relief! Finally, after all her begging and pleading, this woman prevailed upon Jesus to cast a demon out of her daughter. She knew that according to social and ethnic conventions, she, a Gentile, had no business going to Jesus, a Jew, with her request. But her sense of desperation overpowered these concerns. Here was the one man who could heal her daughter.
We might think that this woman should be commended for her faith. And to a degree, we would be right. It took great confidence in Jesus for her to plead her case before the Lord. But faith is only part of the story. This woman could have believed all she wanted, but it would have gotten her nowhere if she didn’t push back against Jesus’ seeming reluctance. She needed determination as well. And she clearly had more than enough of that!
This story shows us that living in faith is not just a matter of resting peacefully in God’s loving arms. It’s not just a matter of trusting that everything will turn out all right. No, there are times when faith means having the determination to fight through obstacles until we see the outcome we believe God wants to give us. There are times when we need to couple faith with sheer willpower.
It doesn’t show a lack of faith, for instance, if we ask the Lord to give us a job, and then spend most of our day checking the want ads and going on interviews. Neither does it show spiritual weakness if we ask God to heal a relationship, and then take the first step toward reconciliation with an estranged friend. If anything, God applauds these efforts, because it shows that we are putting our faith into action. It shows that we are expecting that he will not leave us high and dry when we step out on our own.
We all have areas in our lives where we will need to take the first step, and the second and third step, before we will see God work. Let’s take those steps, firm in our faith and trusting in God’s provision.
“Jesus, help me to take those first steps in faith, confident that you will carry me the rest of the way.”
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