Scripture:
Numbers 13:1-2, 25-14:1, 26-29a, 34-35
Matthew 15:21-28
Reflection:
"O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish."
And her daughter was healed from that hour. Matthew 15: 28
Over a hundred years ago in the rural town of Kilmeena, near Westport, Ireland, my paternal grandparents were betrothed to two others when they talked their priest uncle into quietly marrying them. After the ceremony, they took off for England. That night their uncle told their parents what they had done. So continued a love story and journey for them leading eventually to Chicago in 1909, eight children, 45 grandchildren and god knows how many great grandchildren.
Maria Augusta Kutschera (1905 – 1987) of Vienna, Austria-Hungary, lost her mother at the tender age of seven. At eighteen, with teaching degree in hand she entered the Nonnberg Benedictine Abbey. She had been teaching classes there when her superior asked her to teach one and then eventually all of the seven Von Trapp children who lost their mother. Maria reluctantly said yes and a strange thing happened. Maria Augusta fell in love. Her story has been immortalized in her book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (1949) that eventually led to the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s smash Broadway Musical hit Play, The Sound of Music in 1959.
While probably not as popular a story but certainly better known than that of my grandparents’, the story of the woman in today’s reading from Matthew, Chapter 15, along with the above stories of real people, tell me once again to follow my "inner voice" especially in times of doubt and uncertainty and then…wait for the miracle.
Dan O’Donnell is a Passionist Partner and a longtime friend of the Passionists. He lives in Chicago.