So with ourselves.  Without faith on our part we can have no real relationship with Our Lord at all, for faith is that attitude of heart and mind by which we believe that he truly loves and cares for us, and believing accept him trustfully and completely as our Lord and Master.

So too with humility which recognises that we are utterly dependent on Our Lord to turn us into the sort of people we were created to be; and that we have no claim upon him as by right but only by grace and favour; and that so far from assuming that he should grant our every request as and when we make it, we should be content to leave it to him to answer our prayers as and when he will.

So in the incident of the woman of Phoenicia we read, “…he did not answer her at all” (NRSV, Matthew 15:23).  But in the end, he 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).

Note

In St Mark’s Gospel the woman is described as “a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin” (NRSV, Mark 7:26).  The term ‘Syrophoenicia’ was used to distinguish the area from Libyan Phoenicia on the north coast of Africa. (2) The Phoenicians were a branch of the Canaanite peoples and, like the Canaanites, were heathens. (3)

References

1. Rattey, B.K. (1938) The Gospel according to Saint Matthew in the Revised Version, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

2. Grollenberg, L.H. translated and edited by Reid, J.M.H. (1956) Atlas of the Bible, Edinburgh and London: Nelson.

3. Kitchen, J.H. (1955) Holy fields.  An introduction to the historical geography of the Holy Land, London: The Paternoster Press.