Comment by Fr Luigi Maria Epicoco: Mk 7, 24-30

"When he entered a house, he wanted no one to know, but he could not remain hidden". There is something that seems even greater than Jesus' will: the impossibility of hiding His light. And this I believe is due to the very definition of God. If God is infinite then it is always difficult to find a container that can contain the irrepressible. It follows then that no situation where He is present manages to stem it to the point of hiding it. This is seen above all in the experience of so many saints. Wasn't little Bernadette Soubirous the last of the girls in that unknown village of houses in Lourdes? Yet the poorest, the most ignorant, the most unknown child, who lived in an unknown village in the Pyrenees, became the protagonist of a story that was impossible to contain, to contain, to keep hidden. God cannot be kept hidden where He manifests Himself.

This is why Jesus is constantly disobeyed in his indication not to tell anyone about him. But what today's Gospel indicates so clearly, concerns the story of a foreign mother, outside the circuits of Israel, who tries in every way to be heard and heard by Jesus. However, the reaction that Jesus has is inexplicably harsh and at times offensive: «Let the children be fed first; it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs ». The test this woman is undergoing is tremendous. It is the same test we are sometimes subjected to in our life of faith when we have the feeling of being rejected, unworthy, cast out. What we usually do when faced with this type of feeling is to go away. This woman instead shows us a secret way out: "But she replied:" Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs of the children. " Then he said to her: "For this word of yours go, the devil has come out of your daughter." Back home, she found the girl lying on the bed and the devil was gone ”. AUTHOR: Don Luigi Maria Epicoco