Do you call yourself a believer? Of course, you may say, I am a believer. I go to church, I pray, I receive the sacraments -- I am Catholic, and so I am a believer. But if you call yourself a believer, that means you have faith. So, what I asked you was -- do you have faith? Do you have faith that Jesus has the power to do anything for you? See, we may call ourselves believers, but very often we don’t have enough faith. Just like those during Jesus’ time who belonged to the chosen nation, those who were leaders of religion and tradition, they were believers, they practiced their faith. However, they had no faith in the Son of God. The Canaanite woman from the gospel reading today didn’t belong to the chosen nation. Rather, she was considered a non-believer, a pagan, someone who should be avoided. But that same woman put to shame all those ‘believers’ by showing them that she had a great faith in Jesus Christ. She believed that He would help her, and that’s why she never gave up petitioning Him. And He responded. He cured her daughter. What I am learning today is that it is not enough to call myself a believer, it is not enough to say I believe; I need to have and to ask God for deep faith. “Jesus said to her in reply, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed from that hour.”
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