But the mother was a woman of resource and humour and as he spoke she pictured to herself the familiar scene of the family round the table and, after the custom of the time, wiping the gravy off their fingers with pieces of bread and then throwing them down for the pet dogs to eat.  And she wittily turned Our Lord’s words to her own advantage.  “Ah yes, Lord, yet even the little puppy dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Matthew 15:27).

Then Jesus answered her, “’Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish’.  And her daughter was healed instantly” (NRSV, Matthew 15:28).

We have already seen how Our Lord’s seeming unwillingness to help made the woman persevere in her pleas, and thus called forth from her a faith and hope that she would never have had if her request had been granted at once.  But Our Lord was not satisfied merely with her faith and hope.  He sought also to deepen her humility, because to start with she had made her request as though Our Lord was bound to grant it just because she had asked him – hence his remark about the “little puppy dogs”, and though the use of the diminutive (instead of “dogs”) took some of the edge off his remark, it did not take it all off.  And the woman, by good-humouredly accepting the comparison, passed the test.  In fact by maintaining that these household pets belonged to the family she cleverly turned the reason given for refusing her request into a reason for granting it! (1)