YEAR II: HOMILY FOR THURSDAY OF THE 5TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME (1)

YEAR II: HOMILY FOR THURSDAY OF THE 5TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

HOMILY THEME: THE MIRACLE WITH A SMILE!

BY: Fr. Ben Agbo

HOMILY: * 1 Kg 11: 4 – 13, Mk 7: 24 – 30.

Solomon’s vice was the opposite of the Syrophoenician woman’s virtue. While Solomon’s vice was that he allowed his wives at his old age to turn his heart after other gods and degenerated from grace to grass, the Syrophoenician woman’s virtue was that she allowed Christ to turn away her faith from the pagan idols her people worshipped and so was upgraded from grass to grace. She took a quantum leap of faith from her evil family /environmental foundations of unbelief to a level of faith that amazed Christ. Some biblical scholars have opined that there is no way Jesus could have done that miracle without a smile written on his face. Even while he was delaying in giving a positive response to the woman; even while he told her that it was not good to throw the children’s bread to dogs, the woman could perceive the smile that betrayed the love of God in his heart. According to John Rose, ‘We are to trust God even when God seems to be turning his back on us; we must learn to see the ‘yes’ hidden in His ‘no’.

She presented an excellent line of argument in her prayer that can be adopted today in relation to the theological debate on the effects of evil parental sins, Ex 34 : 6 – 7 & Ezek 18 : 1 – 24. Sure, the woman had a poor spiritual background – her parents and entire country people were heathens. She and her daughter must have soaked themselves in idolatry and dangerous communication with evil spirits that must have kept her daughter in that silly condition. But her present faith in Jesus was to nullify every past covenants with evil spirits, because in the spiritual realm (like in the military), the last order must be obeyed. Jesus needed only her faith and when he saw it, he smiled and did the miracle. May your new level of faith in Jesus Christ produce a smile on the face of Jesus to liberate you and your family members from any Satanic manipulations around your life.

May God bless you today!