“SPRINGS OF LIVING WATER”
Daily Spiritual Reflections
10th February 2022
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THURSDAY, FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin
1 Kgs 11: 4-13; Ps 106: 3-4, 35-37, 40; Mk 7: 24-30
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GREAT FAITH IS SHOWN IN GREAT HUMILITY
Jesus’ encounter with a Syro-Phoenician woman in today's Gospel teaches us what it means to have great faith.
Great faith is having humble confidence in Christ. In her encounter with Jesus, this woman demonstrates what great faith is. It is being both humble and confident. Confidence without humility happens when we come to God full of presumption. It happens when we read all the right books and know all the right answers, but we have no real humility. Presumption is not faith. Humility without confidence happens when we begin to wallow in the magnitude of our sin. It is when we loath in self-pity, have feelings of inferiority and begin to spiritualize those feelings while neglecting to see the magnitude of God’s grace.
Great faith is saving faith. The Syro-Phoenician woman’s response to Jesus was not one of despair and despondency. Rather, she agrees with Jesus about the state of her own unworthiness. She recognizes that Jesus’s mercy is greater and deeper than her unworthiness. To receive Jesus requires us to own our own unworthiness. If we come to God with the attitude that we deserve a place at the table, based on our obedience or our status as being “better than” others, we expose our lack of humility and we will never have a place at the table. When we recognize that in our sin we stand condemned before God, it is then that we realize that Jesus took upon himself our condemnation.
Great faith comes from the grace of God. This woman came to the place of humble confidence in Christ the same way everyone does, by the grace of God and through the work of the Holy Spirit. Great faith is not something we have to muster up; it is not some elusive trait only for the elite. It is for all who come to Jesus in humility.
Response: O Lord, remember us with the favour you show to your people.
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