Following the Lord’s Guidance Along the Everlasting Way, 27th Tuesday (II), October 8, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 8, 2024
Gal 1:13-24, Ps 139, Lk 10:38-42

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday Jesus gave us the Parable of the Good Samaritan, praising the one who made the effort to take care of another in contrast to those who did nothing. In several other places in the Gospel he praised service of others: he said that he himself had come among us as one who serves (Lk 22:27); he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper and told them to do the same (Jn 13:12-14); he promised to gird himself with an apron and wait on those at the heavenly banquet (Lk 12:37); and he said that the greatest among us would be the one who serves the rest (Mt 23:11). And so in today’s Gospel, Jesus was clearly not castigating Martha for her loving service. What he was saying to her, however, was that none of those efforts was strictly-speaking essential, that therefore there was no reason to get worked about them, and that there was something more important, something that Mary realized and that Martha as yet hadn’t.
• Both Martha and Mary loved Jesus very much. As an expression of that love, Martha worked very hard to prepare a meal for him, something that was much more time-consuming in the ancient world without stoves, or refrigerators, or blenders or ready-made cooking supplies than it is today. She likely also cleaned her house, which, too, was much more challenging in the age before vacuum cleaners, running water, and so forth. It’s natural that she would have been exasperated doing all of this work while her sister Mary seemed to be doing nothing. After she complained to Jesus, however, Jesus corrected not Mary but Martha, telling her that she was anxious and concerned about many small things but only one was necessary. Mary had chosen the better part, the one thing necessary — Jesus himself — and it was not going to be taken away from her to focus on relatively less important things. What Mary grasped that Martha didn’t is that Jesus had come to their home primarily to feed and not to be fed, to serve rather than to be served, and it was Mary who understood this and sat at his feet as he not only fed her with the nourishment of his word and presence but cleaned her interior house by his own purity.  The welcome he sought most was their time, their friendship, their love, their open ears and receptive hearts. Mary intuitively grasped this and sat at Jesus’ feet listening to him as if nothing in the rest of the world really mattered — because, in fact, Jesus implies, nothing in the rest of the world really does matter anywhere near as much. Jesus once said in a parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Mt 13:45-46). Jesus was for Mary that pearl of great price more valuable than everything else in the jewelry collection of her life. Mary showed how much she understood the practical consequences of Jesus’ value when he and his apostles visited their home again, about a week before his death. St. John gives us the scene: “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served [some things never change!], and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (Jn 12:1-8). The aromatic nard would have cost Mary almost a full year’s salary, but she spent it entirely on Jesus because she knew he was worth every ounce of it and more. Jesus was her treasure and worth everything she owned. Jesus was the “better part,” better than anything or anyone else. He was the one thing necessary. To sit at his feet was to anoint them with love.
• Jesus called Martha to a conversion through that conversation, from trying to do things for him to permitting him first to do things for her. We see a similar conversion in the first reading with St. Paul. On the surface, we see that Paul’s conversion was from “persecut[ing] the Church of God beyond measure and [trying] to destroy it” to “proclaim[ing] him to the Gentiles,” from killing disciples to making them. He summed up this aspect of his conversion at the end of the reading today, when he, speaking about the Christians of Judea, said, “they only kept hearing that ‘the one who once was persecuting us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’ So they glorified God because of me.” Our constant conversion should be a means by which others are able to glorify God, seeing the wonders of his mercy in our own flesh. But such a look at St. Paul’s conversion would only be superficial. As Pope Benedict used to point out, St. Paul’s conversion wasn’t really from a “bad” life as a murderer to a “good” life as a Christian and apostle, but from a false notion of a holy life to a true one, from an erroneous conception of what was pleasing to God to a real one. He previously thought that he would be saved by his own acti0ns in fidelity to the Mosaic law, whereas afterward he recognized he was saved by Christ, by God’s grace, by his Mercy. His conversion was, in some ways, similar to the conversion to which Christ was calling Martha: to convert his zeal into allowing God to use him as his chosen instrument to the Gentiles rather than trying to love and serve him on his own terms. He eventually realized that to live was Christ. And what did Paul do after the Lord met him on the road to Damascus, after he was baptized, after he had begun to preach so powerfully that he himself was now being hunted down like he had previously tormented the Christians? He went into Arabia, into the desert, not to make tents but to pray. He went to sit at the Lord’s feet. He went to be fed by the Lord.
• Today at this Mass Jesus wants to help us advance along the exodus of our own continued conversion. As we pray to the Lord, “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way,” we know that that is the way of conversion to sharing in Christ’s cruciform love, receiving it like Mary of Bethany and passing it on with all we are and have. He who is the Way not only sets us in the right direction, but indicates to us what the conclusion of that path will be, by his words and deeds in interaction with the two sisters in Bethany. So let’s get practical, because each of us wants one day to have Jesus say of us what he said of Mary in today’s Gospel, that we have chosen the better part and we won’t be separated from that Better Part even into eternity. Let’s ponder three applications.
  • The first is our hospitality toward Jesus. Like the sisters of Bethany, each of us is called to welcome Christ into our homes, both our physical homes and the spiritual abode of our hearts and souls. Do we welcome Jesus and sit at his feet in prayer? Christ knocks on the doors of each of our hearts and homes wanting to come in, but how often and how much do we invite him in?
  • Second, we’re called to imitate Mary in choosing the better part and truly allowing Jesus to feed us as he desires to do. It’s not enough for us to know what our priority should be. We also have to choose it. It’s not enough just to know where the treasure is buried, we need to make the choice to sell off other things that own us so that we can buy the field. That means reorienting our life to make Jesus truly its center. To choose Jesus as the best part of all was Mary of Bethany’s great wisdom and we will be wiser the more we imitate her. And that is a choice we’re called to renew each day.
  • The last application is to Martha. Martha often gets a bad rap in Church history in comparison to her sister because many interpret what Jesus said to her as a spiritual smack down, somehow denigrating the loving service Martha was doing for him in the kitchen. Jesus wasn’t at all minimizing the importance of what Martha was doing; he was focusing, rather, on how she was doing it. The last thing Jesus would want would be for all of us merely to sit at his feet and allow everyone else to work to serve us. That’s certainly not the Christian way or the way Jesus adopted. Like Martha, we are called to work hard serving others but we’re supposed to do it with the spirit of Mary. That’s what the sanctification of our work is all about, to have Martha’s hands and Mary’s contemplative heart, so that we won’t be distracted by many other things, but so focused on and united with Jesus in work, at school and in family life that we’ll be getting fed by him in action and be better equipped to feed others not just by our work but with the One working within us. Each of us is called to work as hard as Martha, out of love for God and others, in setting an eloquent, attractive example like Mary, the example of a life with Jesus at the center. This last thought is particularly evocative for me today, on the 26th anniversary of my ordination as a deacon. The very word deacon means servant and we are ordained in the image and the person of the one who came to serve not to be served. But when we look at the ordination of the first deacons, they were men chosen not fundamentally because of their strong work ethic, efficiency, stamina and practical know how — all good things — but rather they were men “filled with Holy Spirit and wisdom” and “the Holy Spirit and faith” (Acts 6:4-5). They were prayerful, faithful men who could see things the way God saw them. The Church wants her servants always to be those who collaborate with God within, who work differently than the rest, because they work through, with, in, and for the Better Part and One Thing Necessary.
• At today’s Mass, in the modern Bethany of this Church, we, too, have a chance to welcome Jesus into our life as he deserves and wishes to be welcomed. During the Liturgy of the Word, we sit at Jesus’ feet listening to him. During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, even though we are not worthy to receive him under our roof, he comes to feed us with what he knows we need. Jesus is the one thing necessary. With Mary, we choose him here as the Better Part. We ask Saints Martha and Mary to intercede for us before Jesus’ feet in heaven for the grace to imitate their choice today, tomorrow and forever in such a contagious way that we might help the whole world reprioritize.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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