NOTES for Mat 15:29-31

You look at the words the Lord speaks to us today and remember how, just the other day, you received an email asking you to pray for the newly departed young Maria. She died of cystic fibrosis. And for her mother Marina, who is now left alone, because her second daughter died of the same disease. How can this be? So many people prayed for them! And what does it matter to us that for a brief moment Christ visited the earth and healed some number of sick people... If those people were placed beside all the children through all the ages who have died, they would simply not be noticeable. So then, should we rejoice?

Yes, rejoice. Because Christ did not simply come and heal; He came and turned their diseases into His wounds, died, and rose again. He is not merely a Healer and Wonderworker, though He is both. He showed us the Way of life. He lit the road into the darkness.

Not one of Jesus' miracles is limited to a local meaning in time and space for one particular person. Therefore the Gospel stories about miracles cannot be read outside the context of the whole Gospel. Otherwise we risk falling into a very terrible error, one so characteristic of our contemporaries today: perceiving the Church as consumers. Pay for a prayer request for health, and health will increase. And the church turns into a store. It is terrible.

Christ heals, but by His wounds. This cannot be forgotten. By His wounds unto death. To a real, agonizing death. A death that was no easier for Him than it is for each of us. On the contrary, it is easier for us: we usually die under narcotics, while He refused them; we die on clean sheets, while He was covered in dried blood and dust; we are surrounded by loving relatives, while He died under mockery and abuse. One can continue this list, but it is probably not worth doing. Let our heart simply be filled with gratitude toward Him, with love and tenderness. And may we fear nothing, for "it was worse for my God, and more painful for the Mother of God" (N. S. Gumilyov)

Sometimes, reading the Gospel, one may think that Jesus' only task during His earthly ministry was healings. Although He Himself spoke first of all about the Kingdom, which, in His words, had "drawn near." At first glance there is no direct connection here, and the healings look simply like acts of mercy toward the sick, who truly needed healing. Sometimes Christian preachers even emphasize that Jesus, they say, always helped people by freeing them from illness, giving them a chance to feel what the full life of a healthy person is, and only afterward spoke to them about the Kingdom. But is this so? Outwardly, everything really does look exactly this way. If, of course, healings are considered simply deliverance from disease and the restoration of physical health. Many who saw Jesus during His earthly ministry thought exactly this, regarding the healings He performed as the result of the action of God's power, just like all other miracles performed by God through the prayers of His servants. But is this really so? Of course, healing is always an action of God's power. But in Jesus' case, what strikes one is how the healings happen: Jesus often heals those around Him by His mere appearance. Clearly these are not simple healings, but the action of the same breath of the Kingdom that accompanies Jesus everywhere. Jesus does not cure illnesses, even supernaturally. He simply brings those who trust Him into communion with the Kingdom He has brought into the world. And in the Kingdom, unsurprisingly, there is no place for evil, sin, illness, or death. Of course, healing by itself does not yet mean the fullness of transformation. Those healed, even after healing, remain part of the untransformed world. But by sharing in the fullness of the Kingdom, they receive that fullness of life which is possible in the untransformed world. Thus the healings performed by Jesus become a witness to the Kingdom.

The many healings the Lord performs become something like an illustration of Isaiah's prophecy: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute shall sing" (Isa. 35:5-6). We see the fulfillment of what the prophet says; we see Christ overcoming terrible diseases, incurable as we understand them. But the Lord does this not only to show that He came to embody what the prophets spoke of. He heals the sick because He loves each person brought to Him. In His eyes, the life of each of us is precious. We see that the Lord does not merely give; the Lord gives in abundance. He not only accomplishes everything the prophets spoke of, He not only heals the sick, He also makes sure that all these people are fed. He is concerned that the difficult trip back will drain their strength and rob them of the joy of healing. And He is not stopped by the fact that the disciples have only the smallest amount with them. And so, by God's mercy, the whole crowd of four thousand is fed, and quite a lot is left over.

We too cannot offer God very much; sometimes we have almost nothing at all, and each of us is immeasurably small beside the Lord. Then we become ashamed - truly, what can we give You, Lord? But the Lord shows us how our smallness can become a source of food and help for our brothers and sisters. Only this will no longer be our strength or our power; it will be the strength of His love, His mercy, and His Spirit.

Today's reading again offers us two episodes that, at first glance, seem directly unrelated: the healing of the Samaritan woman's daughter (vv. 22-28) and the miracle of the multiplication of food, similar to the one described in the previous chapter (vv. 29-38; compare Matt 14:13-21). And yet there is a connection between them. That connection runs through the Kingdom, whose manifestation underlies the events described in both episodes. After all, both the miracles and the healings mentioned in the Gospel narratives essentially always speak of one thing: the Kingdom which, in the Savior's words, "has come near."

When we read in the Gospel that this woman was a Canaanite, it does not mean she was "second-rate," or of the wrong origin, or had somehow else failed to please Jesus. We know, having read the Gospel and simply sensing it in our hearts, that Jesus is always ready to help and heal the poor, the sinful, and the rejected. For the evangelist's first listeners it was entirely clear that she was a real pagan: she believed in pagan gods, worshiped them, and offered sacrifices to them. That is exactly why the Lord subjects her faith to such a test - to help her understand why she is turning to Him for help and not to her own gods.

Here a line is drawn 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. At the same time, paganism does not necessarily mean belief in other gods. It can also be the very ordinary Christian hope not in the one God, but in something else: money, one's own abilities, one's political party, the thought that things will somehow work out, and so on. Paganism is when we live not for God, but for someone or something else, most often simply for ourselves. If we, while being such pagans, want to ask Christ for something and turn to Him in prayer, we will need, together with this Canaanite woman, to pass through a complete revaluation of our faith and understand why we have turned to Christ and not to our idols...