Daily Gospel Reflection
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February 13, 2025
Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
It was a hot, humid day in August 2003 at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart when we married. I remember standing at the altar, light streaming through blue stained glass, as we vowed to love and care for each other “in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.” Looking back, sickness felt distant then—I could recall being ill just once in college.
As children, it is our mothers who give us our first immunity in the womb. Before I was even aware of what sickness was, my mother was already protecting and caring for me. I know that she prayed much for me in those days before I was born, hoping that I would be healthy.
In the gospel, the Syrophoenician mother begs Jesus to heal her daughter. While their exchange about “dogs eating crumbs under the table” is memorable, the story begins with her anguished, unrecorded cry. What were those words that stopped Jesus, compelling him to listen? The Evangelist leaves them unsaid, inviting us to imagine our own prayer in times of need.
After years of health, my husband and I recently faced illness. He spent two months in the hospital. It was a terrifying time but also a time filled with a mysterious grace that deepened my sense of my vocation. Many friends and family prayed the Memorare with us. During those long days and nights, I also prayed my own anguished prayers, begging Christ for his healing. Today, we are profoundly grateful for the recovery that my husband has made thus far.
The Syrophoenician woman’s unrecorded cry reminds us that Christ sees our suffering and hears our prayers. May we trust that Christ will be present in our moment of need.
Prayer
Almighty Father, the woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit fell at the feet of Jesus with great devotion. With the same faith, may we also trust and commend ourselves to your healing grace. We ask this through Christ our Lord, Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Catherine de Ricci is a famous mystical saint who was known for many miraculous and mysterious phenomena that are associated with her holiness, such as bilocation and the stigmata.
She was born in Florence in 1522 to a well-known family, and baptized with the name Alexandrina. She adopted the name Catherine when she joined a Dominican convent at the age of 13.
For several years, she suffered from a mysterious illness—efforts to care for her only made things worse. She bore the agonizing pain by meditating on the suffering of Jesus, and turned her discomfort into prayer.
Catherine was quickly promoted to leadership in her community, and when she was 30, she was appointed prioress of the convent until she died. She became well-known for her holiness and wisdom, and many people sought her out for advice, including princes, bishops, and three cardinals (all of whom became pope eventually).
Catherine was a mystic, and people described mysterious qualities about her. St. Philip Neri, for example, who was very cautious about validating visions, had in-person conversations with Catherine even though he was in Rome and she had never left Florence; witnesses confirmed her appearance.
She also frequently fell into ecstatic prayer—getting utterly lost in what she was experiencing in her meditation. In fact, once a week for 12 years, she fell into a trance during which she beheld and experienced Christ’s passion. She would lose consciousness every Thursday at noon and would only come to herself at 4 p.m. on Friday. During that time, she would move about, assuming the positions that Christ held during his passion (she held her hands out to be bound, just as he did when he was arrested in the garden, for example). During these raptures, she would take on the wounds of Christ according to the sequence in which he received them.
Crowds began to gather to witness her prayer and ecstasies, and it began to distract from the life of the convent. Catherine herself was embarrassed by all the attention. The community prayed that her wounds and experience would lessen in intensity so that they could go about the work of their common life together, and in 1554 the visions ceased.
Catherine was known to bear the stigmata—the wounds of Christ—in her hands, feet, side, and around her head. She is also known to have had a mystical ring appear around her finger: on Easter Sunday, 1542, she was visited by the Lord, and he gave her a gold ring with a diamond in it as a sign that she belonged to him. To the world, her finger appeared to have a hard ring just below the surface of her skin; at other times it looked like it had a red rash around it with peculiar markings. Catherine unequivocally saw and experienced it as a physical gold ring.
Apart from these fantastic mystical experiences, Catherine was holy in ordinary ways as well—she was a very healthy and whole person, virtuous, and a faithful administrator. She was an efficient worker and caring for the sick made her very happy.
Catherine died of natural causes, after a long illness, when she was 68 years old. She is patron saint of those who are sick, and her relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica. Her image comes from the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art on campus—it is an illustration by Luigi Gregori, the artist in residence who painted the murals in the Basilica.
St. Catherine of Ricci, you are the bi-locating mystic who is patron of sick people, pray for us!
Image credit: Luigi Gregori (Italian, 1819-1896), Saint Catherine of Ricci, mid-19th century, chalk on paper. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art: Gift of the Artist, AA2009.056.365.