SOMETIMES we might be tempted to think that our prayer is ineffective. We entrust a specific intention to God, and it seems that nothing changes. We try to be good Christians, yet our lives are filled with difficulties. We ask our Lord not to abandon us, and instead, our discouragement grows. In those moments, it may seem that our pleas go unanswered.
The Canaanite woman in the Gospel must have felt something similar. When she heard that Jesus was going to the region of Tyre and Sidon, she approached Him and cried out, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon (Mt 15:22). We can understand this mother’s suffering; she longed to do anything to help her daughter, but all her efforts had been in vain. Perhaps she had heard of Jesus’ miracles and therefore approached Him hoping He could do something for her daughter. The Gospel, however, records our Lord’s surprising reaction: “He did not answer her a word” (Mt 15:23).
“If you truly desire something,” Leo XIV said, “do everything possible to obtain it, even when others rebuke you, humiliate you, and tell you to give up. If you truly desire it, keep crying out!”1 Faced with Jesus’ silence, the woman did not lose heart; on the contrary, she persisted even more strongly, to the point that the disciples begged the Master to listen to her because she kept following them. This constancy in prayer, even when it seems to bear no fruit, is an attitude that many saints have practiced and advised. “Persevere in prayer,” Saint Josemaría wrote. “Persevere, even if your efforts seem fruitless. Prayer is always fruitful.”2 We have the assurance that “there is no cry that God does not hear, even when we are not aware we are addressing him.”3 The scene with the Canaanite woman reminds us that our Lord knows what is in our heart and wants to increase our faith in the midst of the specific circumstances we are going through. Faced with similar requests, Jesus acts and responds in different ways. Therefore, let us not hesitate to turn to Him, as this woman teaches us today. Although her daughter has not yet been healed, her persistence has already borne the fruit Christ seeks in her: a faith that does not waver, neither in the face of her daughter's suffering nor in the face of Jesus' silence.
THAT WOMAN had to overcome many barriers to approach Jesus. As a foreigner, she didn’t belong to the people of Israel, and it wasn’t customary for Jews to interact with people like her. Our Lord's initial silence could easily have discouraged her and led her to think that He didn’t want to or couldn’t help her. But nevertheless, she knelt before Him and cried out, “Lord, help me!” (Mt 15:25). The more extreme the situation, the more simple and direct our prayer should be. That woman didn’t mince words, nor did she use eloquent pronouncements or solemn titles. Her unadorned request made it clear how urgently she needed his help.
If Jesus had previously responded with silence, now He utters words that might seem harsh to us: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (Mt 15:26), referring to the fact that He “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24). For that woman did not belong to the people who had first received God’s promises. But Jesus’ reply did not extinguish her trust. The woman doesn’t argue, she doesn’t walk away offended, she doesn’t claim a right. With his words, Jesus is inviting her to increase her faith and trust even more. And she finds within the very image used by Jesus a reason to continue hoping: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (Mt 15:27). Faced with this bold and humble attitude, our Lord doesn’t restrain his praise and joyfully acknowledges: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire” (Mt 15:28).
Christ’s silence and apparent harshness toward the Canaanite woman reveal two qualities of faith-filled prayer. “The first thing needed in prayer is perseverance; the second, humility. Have a holy stubbornness, be trusting. Remember that when we ask the Lord for something important, he may want to be asked for many years. Keep on! But keep on with ever increasing trust.”4 The Canaanite woman perseveres in her petition, but she doesn’t turn her plea into a demand. She knows that everything Jesus grants her will always be a gift. That is why her prayer moves our Lord’s heart: because it combines trusting persistence with the humility of one who knows how needy she is.
WITH the viewpoint gained by contemplating this passage from a distance, we can learn to see what happens to us from God’s perspective. We can deduce that our Lord, right from the beginning, wanted to heal the daughter possessed by the demon. But, at the same time, He also had other plans for that mother who suffered so greatly for her daughter and trusted in Him. God sees our lives through a loving design that we often fail to understand.
A painful illness, years of struggling with a humiliating defect, wounds inflicted by loved ones, gray days that go by without much excitement… These are all situations we might like to change, and from which, like the Canaanite woman, we persistently ask our Lord to deliver us or guide us in a specific way. This episode from the Gospel shows us that Christ’s silence and words that at first might seem disconcerting had a deeper purpose. He wanted to strengthen that woman’s faith before granting her what she so greatly desired: “And her daughter was healed instantly” (Mt 15:28).
In our prayer, therefore, when we ask God for something, we can also ask Him to help us discover the gifts He wants to give us -- gifts we often fail to notice. Perhaps what Jesus wants to give us is even greater than what we are asking for. Our Lady wasn’t spared “the experience of pain, the weariness of work, or the light-filled darkness of faith.”5We can ask Mary to teach us to trust in her Son even when we don’t understand his plans or times, and to accept with faith the gifts He wants to give us in every circumstance.
1 Leo XIV, Audience, 11 June 2025.
2 Saint Josemaría, The Way, no. 101.
3 Leo XIV, Audience, 11 June 2025.
4 Saint Josemaría, The Forge, no. 535.
5 Saint Josemaría, Christ is Passing By, no. 172.