Today's Gospel made me think of Sr. Sabina, one of our Italian missionaries (really, a founder of our USA community), who died in Boston about 8 years ago. She was in her eighties and had had Parkinson's for at least a decade. To look at her, you'd think Sr. 
Sabina (whom we sometimes called simply "Bina") was a frail, gentle, delicate soul. Not exactly. She had a razor-sharp mind and a tongue that always spoke frankly. And she never called it quits. Even when she had been wheelchair bound for years, she still tried, occasionally, to ditch the chair. One of those times, she ended up on the floor with a broken hip. Actually, we don't know if the hip broke (osteoporosis) and sent her to the floor, or if the little rascal (she was quite petite) had been working her way out of the chair, or if the Parkinson's itself had caused a sudden movement that landed her on the hallway carpet. But since she was known to try to do without the chair, option B was a possibility. When the incident took place, at first I felt frustrated that someone would be fighting against such obvious limitations, but I began to realize that that kind of thinking can condition us almost to give up, but Sr. Sabina was not that way. And for a moment, I understood that this was something Jesus found charming in her.
Sabina (whom we sometimes called simply "Bina") was a frail, gentle, delicate soul. Not exactly. She had a razor-sharp mind and a tongue that always spoke frankly. And she never called it quits. Even when she had been wheelchair bound for years, she still tried, occasionally, to ditch the chair. One of those times, she ended up on the floor with a broken hip. Actually, we don't know if the hip broke (osteoporosis) and sent her to the floor, or if the little rascal (she was quite petite) had been working her way out of the chair, or if the Parkinson's itself had caused a sudden movement that landed her on the hallway carpet. But since she was known to try to do without the chair, option B was a possibility. When the incident took place, at first I felt frustrated that someone would be fighting against such obvious limitations, but I began to realize that that kind of thinking can condition us almost to give up, but Sr. Sabina was not that way. And for a moment, I understood that this was something Jesus found charming in her. Maybe it was something like that with the Syro-Phoenician woman in today's Gospel. Faced with a rough dismissal on Jesus' part, she did not just meekly accept it as "the will of God," but came right back at God himself, and God enjoyed the repartee.
I wonder, does Jesus expect us to be a little spunky with him sometimes, only to find us so conditioned by ideas of reverence that we don't respond to him humanly, leaving both of us let down?
1 comment:
What a beautiful reflection!
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