Pleasantly exhausted after a news-free beach week. Anything happen? Will probably give you my book reviews as the week unfolds, but since little sister is in town with her chilluns, expect erratic blogging this week.
Funny experience at Mass this morning. The Gospel of the day was Matthew 15:21-28, in which Jesus appears to call a Gentile woman and her kids "dogs." She trails behind his entourage begging for help for her possessed daughter; the disciples beg Jesus to deal with her just to shut her up. He says he's been sent to the lost sheep of Israel and it isn't right to give the children's food to dogs. The woman replies, "even the dogs get scraps from the master's table," and Christ praises her faith and heals her daughter.
I couldn't hear much of the homily because of restive children in the pew in front of me (for once, not my own toddler), but I did catch the priest mentioning that when you go to the original text, the word Christ uses is not the perjorative "dogs," but the affectionate, "puppies." My missal translates the word as "house-dog," I suppose meaning similarly to indicate pets that are part of the household, not strays out on the street, which is the way we naturally read the passage when it's just translated "dogs." Each year when my Gospel reflection group reads this passage, everyone wrestles with the apparent harshness of Christ's words, so I was charmed by this. The priest mentioned that a friend had recently taught him this.
I related this to Hubby --who'd gone to an earlier mass-- when I came home, and it turns out Hubby was the friend, and the "recently" was a conversation just after the previous mass. Our priest-friend does quick homiletic editing, it seems. So it seems I got this morning's homily from my husband.
Somehow this Husband-homily was more palatable than the ones I usually receive. Maybe from now on he should nag me in a Nigerian accent, while wearing a chasuble?
