Week 5 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 2.18-25; Psalm 128; Mark 7.24-30

There is another kind of nakedness which carries this woman in the gospel beyond shame. That is how the original condition of man and woman is described in the first reading: a nakedness in which there is no shame. Besides their physical nakedness, so often represented in art, Adam and Eve would also have been, presumably, open and transparent in their dealings with each other, frank and honest. The only chance we have to see it - sadly - is in their collaboration in disobedience. 

But the Syrophoenician woman in the gospel is forced into another kind of shameless nakedness in approaching Jesus. What drives her to this is her daughter's need. We see it often in the lengths to which mothers especially, and sometimes fathers also, are prepared to go in defence of their children or in pursuit of medical or other care for their children. It is the fierce power of love, spoken of in the Song of Songs 8.6, love strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. 

If she has to present herself raw and exposed, open to ridicule and rejection, she will do it. And she does do it, persevering even through the strange response of Jesus. She was naked, on behalf of her daughter, and was not ashamed. Wherever a person finds themselves driven by a great love, it will be so.

In this way she actually becomes a sign pointing forward to Jesus himself, to his nakedness on the cross. He is driven by a great love for the ones who have been entrusted to him by the Father, a love strong as death, a passion fierce as the grave. In such situations there is no time for false modesty, only open and transparent communication and action.

The Irish spiritual writer Eugene Boylan calls Jesus our 'tremendous lover'. And he is, shameless on the cross as he conquers sin and evil and death. Others tried to force on him another kind of shame but in his nakedness he restores paradise and establishes the promise of a return to its lost innocence. We see this power working already in the fierce and passionate love of the mother for her daughter. It drives her to present herself in the way she did: she made herself completely vulnerable but she was not ashamed. Later he too will make himself completely vulnerable and will not be ashamed.