Imitating Without Ceasing the Deeds of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus, 17th Thursday (I), July 29, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York
Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of SS. Martha, Mary and Lazarus
July 29, 2021
Ex 40:16-21.34-38, Ps 84, 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: 

• Joy at the new feast of SS. Martha, Mary and Lazarus, inscribed in the General Roman Calendar by Pope Francis this January 26, 2021.
• We had previously celebrated just Martha on this day, because of the conflation and confusion since the time of Pope St. Gregory of the Great of Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene and the anonymous sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet in the home of Simon the Pharisee (Lk 7). We never celebrated St. Lazarus with a feast. Today we have a chance to celebrate all three.
• But not just to celebrate them. In the Collect (Opening Prayer) that the US Bishops have given for this Memorial, taken from the Common of Saints (4), we pray that God “we, who celebrate the memory of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus, may also imitate without ceasing their deeds.” This is the means by which God will “spur us on to a better life.” So today it is fitting to focus on the deeds of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus so as to imitate them non-step.
• We know well the deeds of Martha. She loved the Lord and worked for him. Cleaning. Preparing the Meals. Writing Him. Running Out to See Him after Lazarus’ death. Jesus in today’s Gospel cautions her about doing these deeds of love “worried and anxious” but she did them all the same. In a similar way, we need to work to be hospitable to the Lord and to all he sends. We must do the work he gives us and seek to please him.
• We likewise know well the deeds of Mary. She recognized Jesus had come to their home to feed and not be fed and she sat as his feet as a gourmand to his gourmet. She knew he was the one thing necessary and the better part and chose him. We’re called to imitate that deed of receiving all God wants to give, in our prayer and throughout our life. We also see, as we ponder every Holy Tuesday, that she spent 300 days aromatic nard anointing him out of love for his death and resurrection. We are called ceaselessly to hold nothing back with regard to Jesus, not just to give him something, but to try to give him all we are and have, with love.
• The deeds of Lazarus are inconspicuous but very important. Like St. Joseph, he was not a garrulous man, with no words recorded. All we know about him is that he was raised by Jesus from the dead on the fourth day and thereafter was a marked man, with the same people who were plotting to kill Jesus seeking to kill him. But thereafter, resuscitated, he became a living sign of Jesus’ power over death. To imitate ceaselessly his deeds is to become a living sign of the resurrection, with its joy, its courage, its prophetic hope of eternal life with Jesus.
• As we celebrate their feast and seek ceaseless to imitate their deeds, we do so not just individually but together as they welcomed Jesus into their home, into their lives, and sought to live in friendship with him in their individual work and witness. Today in the first reading we have an image of what they sought to do in Bethany in the description of the Dwelling, which as the place of God’s presence, served as a proto-tabernacle. When the Cloud (the Shekinah) came down upon the dwelling, they stayed with the Lord; when the Cloud left, they followed the Lord. It’s a sign of how we’re supposed to pray with Jesus, like Mary at his feet, and then like Martha and Lazarus move outward, but move together with the cloud of fire, move together with God’s presence.
• As we celebrate Martha, Mary and Lazarus’ first joint feast day liturgically, we ask the Lord again to help us ceaselessly imitate their virtues and give the Lord hospitality, so that he may fill us with his glory in prayer and life! And we make our own the proper prayer for this Memorial, which has not yet been translated: “O God, whose Son called Lazarus back to life from the tomb and deigned to be welcomed in the house of Martha, grant, we beseech you, that we, faithfully serving among our brothers and sisters, may merit to with Mary to be nourish by meditation on his word.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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