NOTES for Mar 7:24-30
When we read in the Gospel that this woman was Syrophoenician, this does not mean that she was "second class," or of the wrong origin, or had displeased Jesus in some other way. We know that Jesus is always ready to help and heal the poor, the sinful, and the rejected. The point is that she is a real pagan, that is, she believes in pagan gods, worships them, and offers sacrifices to them. This is precisely why the Lord subjects her to such a test of faith: to help her understand for herself why she is turning to Him for help and not to her own gods.
Here a line is drawn, as it were, between a person's pagan ideas and turning to Jesus, that is, prayer. Prayer to Christ (and to the Father in Christ) is incompatible with paganism, and paganism is not necessarily belief in other gods, but also the quite ordinary Christian tendency to place hope not in the one God, but in something else: in money, in one's abilities, in one's party, in "it will work out somehow," and so on.
Paganism is when we live not for God, but for someone else (for example, for ourselves). If, being such pagans, we want to ask Christ for something, to turn to Him in prayer, we will need, together with this Canaanite woman, to go through a complete reappraisal of our faith, to understand why we have turned to Christ and not to our idols...