"For those who actually researched leaders, the inventors, the financially successful, there is one secret found within them all. Don't be disappointed. The secret is a simple one that we can all do if we put our mind to it. The secret - it is perseverance."

Perseverance is a great grace. To go on gaining and advancing every day, we must be resolute, and bear and suffer as our blessed forerunners did. Which of them gained heaven without a struggle? - St. Elizabeth Ann Seton: (1774 –1821: was the first native-born citizen of the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church (September 14, 1975).)

Gospel Text: (MK 7:24-30)

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.

God knows you better than you know yourself. God demands faith from us, even when we believe we have none. He is willing to “pull” our faith out of us—we might even say that He is willing to test us—in order to purify our faith. Jesus knows what sort of faith this woman has. He is willing to draw it out, because without faith on this woman’s part, He will not work a miracle.

Pray for the sort of confident faith that this woman has to banter with God and to recognize that your being an outsider is not an impediment to the grace God wishes to give you.