Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily II/Chapter 19

by Anonymous

Chapter XIX.—Justa, a Proselyte.

“There is amongst us one Justa, a Syro-Phœnician, by race a Canaanite, whose daughter was oppressed with a grievous disease.^[1]  And she came to our Lord, crying out, and entreating that He would heal her daughter.  But He, being asked also by us, said, ‘It is not lawful to heal the Gentiles, who are like to dogs on account of their using various^[2] meats and practices, while the table in the kingdom has been given to the sons of Israel.’  But she, hearing this, and begging to partake like a dog of the crumbs that fall from this table, having changed what she was,^[3] by living like the sons of the kingdom, she obtained healing for her daughter, as she asked.  For she being a Gentile, and remaining in the same course of life, He would not have healed had she remained a Gentile, on account of its not being lawful to heal her as a Gentile.^[4]

Footnotes

1. [Chaps. 19–21 are peculiar to the Homilies, though in Recognitions, vii. 32, Justa is named as having purchased and educated Niceta and Aquila.—R.]
2. For διαφόροις Duncker proposes ἀδιαφόροις, “meats without distinction.”
3. That is, having caused to be a Gentile, by abstaining from forbidden foods.
4. There are several various readings in this sentence, and none of them can be strictly construed; but the general sense is obvious.