Day: February 25, 2024

“O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”

What do we want? Do we really know? This Gospel story speaks directly to those realities and concerns. The Prayer of Humble Access in our liturgy captures the essence of this Gospel story in its application to our lives in our wilderness pilgrimage to God.

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord; Trusting in our own righteousness, But in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy So much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, Whose property is always to have mercy…

We pray this as a necessary part of our preparation and approach to the Sacrament. The prayer echoes explicitly the story of the Canaanite woman who approaches Jesus so resolutely and yet so humbly. But not simply for herself. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.” The troubles of the daughter are also the worries of the mother. They always are.

Two words stand here in a complementary relation. They are the words “humble” and “access”. Humility is the condition of our access to God. What the prayer expresses is a fundamental attitude of Faith. It is not our presumption – our trusting in our own righteousness, our feelings and self-certainties – but our humility; our trusting in the manifold and great mercies of God. Against all that is thrown at her, she has a hold of this one thing: the mercies of God in Jesus Christ. To have a hold of that is humility – she presumes upon nothing else. It is this that gains her access to the heart of Christ.

Humility is not the same thing as low self-esteem. It is not the whinge of ‘I can’t do that’ which really means ‘I won’t even try’. It is not the whine of the ‘poor-me’s’ which is really our grovelling for attention. Humility is not grovelling self-pity. For such things are really our presumption and pride. We demand all the attention as if we were the centre of everything. We aren’t. Humility is the recognition that Jesus is the centre and that we have access to him.

“Then came she and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me.” There is an encounter and an engagement with Jesus. The dialogue is quite intense – even frighteningly so. But her kneeling down before him is not manipulation. It is not grovelling self-abasement. It is instead the attitude and posture of Faith. It says, in effect, that God is God and we are not. Such is humility. It is the condition of our access to God. The woman does not presume to be the centre of attention. For all her persistence, what is constant is her focus on Jesus. He has her undivided attention. She sees in him the mercies of God which she seeks. “Lord, help me.”

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