Today's Mass Readings

In religious studies, there is a concept called the “personification” of God. It can either mean that, the divine, imagined merely as a “supreme power,” is given human (personal) qualities, or in the biblical context, God, who is conceived of as interacting with his people in the same way that human being interact with each other. Thus God is shown as getting angry or being jealous or using human language and expressions to communicate. Thus, in today’s first reading, in utter frustration at the faithless of the Israelites, God makes the following declaration:
Here in the desert shall your dead bodies fall.
Forty days you spent in scouting the land;
forty years shall you suffer for your crimes:
one year for each day.
Thus you will realize what it means to oppose me.
I, the LORD, have sworn to do this
to all this wicked assembly that conspired against me:
here in the desert they shall die to the last man.” (Numbers 14:34-35).
In fact, none of the entire original people who departed from Egypt actually entered the promised land expect people like Joshua whose family remained faithful to God. Even Moses himself was barred by God from entering the promised land because he struck the rock twice at Merribah when God has asked him to strike it once. In these and other instances, (destruction of the world through the great flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, God is portrayed as a human person). What shall we make of the “personification” of God? Simply because the Bible portrays God with human qualities, there is no guarantee that God is like human beings. The only function that the “personification” of God does is that it allows us human beings to understand the demands of a sacred relationship. In other words, if human beings who are weak and sinful expect honesty, steadfastness, and sincerity in normal human relationships, how much should the same criteria be applicable in human relationship with an all holy God.

God’s being totally transcends human categories, but the “personification” of God is meant to impress upon us the demands of our relationship with God – a condition met more easily by foreigners in the Bible than by God’s own people. Thus, in today’s gospel reading, Jesus praises the Canaanite woman for her faith. The Canaanites were the original inhabitants of the land God gave to the Israelites (See the first sentence of today’s first reading – Numbers 13:1). This Canaanite woman showed a deeper understanding of the divine-human relationship than did any Israelite.

The readings invite us today to evaluate the quality of our relationship with God. What would God say of us and our relationship with him? Would he say, “Great is your faith?”