Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, July 16, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil
July 16, 2022

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The text that guided the homily was: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, as we eavesdrop on the dialogue he has with Saints Martha and Mary in their home in Bethany.
• We all know that one of the most important things in human life is to learn how to set and keep proper priorities. Often the difference between a happy and unhappy life, between a rewarding and a wasted one, centers on whether we’ve set the right goals and perseveringly sought to achieve them. And it is getting harder today for people to set and achieve these priorities. So many of our technological advances, while offering great possibilities to improve our lives, often just leave us torn apart by a list of to-dos that just seems to keep growing, enslaving us to so many tasks that there seems to be no time for the things that deep down we know are most important. A few years back there was a poll of American women that revealed that their greatest desire is for more time; there is not enough time in a day, they say, to accomplish all of the things they have to do, from work, to taxiing their kids from one event to another, to various chores around the home, to the countless other time-consuming activities that occupy their ever-diminishing waking hours. Scores of American men have long complained that, because of all of the demands at work and the fulfillment of other duties, they have less and less time to do the things that are really fulfilling. Even many teenagers and young kids today have to keep a detailed calendar because with lessons, sports, homework, and even play dates, their schedule has become overwhelming. To make matters more complicated across the generations, technological advances like cell phones, email, texts, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, has created a culture of the nanosecond, where those contacting us have gotten so used to an immediate response that we feel we must drop what we’re doing and answer right away. Life has become like the whack-o-mole game that many of us used to play at arcades, where black moles pop up in front of us and we have to whack them down continuously with a mallet. The only difference is that what we’re about is not a game and that the moles are coming up not just in front of us in five or six predictable holes but all around us all the time. To all of us in this frenetic era, who feel drawn-and-quartered by seemingly having to do so many things well at once, Jesus, with words shocking to our 21st century sensibilities, presents us this Sunday a summary of the Good News. He who came to set the captives free (Lk 4:18), who is the Truth incarnate (Jn 14:6), who knows everything and who cannot lie, tells us in one sentence, as he told Martha, the secret to our liberation: “You are worried and distracted by many things. Only one thing is necessary.”
• In the scene from Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus helps us to learn what that one thing is, what our true priority needs to be. Martha and Mary welcome Jesus to their home, but they seek to welcome him in two different ways. Martha seeks to please the Lord by doing various things for him. St. Luke doesn’t specify what she was doing, but anyone who has hosted a guest knows the types of things that would have characterized her hospitality: finishing up whatever cleaning might be done, setting up the place to eat, and doubtless preparing a meal.
• When Martha, however, solicits Jesus’ authoritative help in persuading her sister Mary to share in the work, she receives what at first glance seems to be a mild rebuke. To her plea, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me,” Jesus, rather than doing so, says to Martha, “Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
• What Jesus was notsaying here was that Martha’s efforts were somehow evil or unappreciated. Shortly before he entered their home, Jesus, as we heard last week, gave the parable of the Good Samaritan, praising the one who made the effort to take care of another in contrast to the priest and Levite 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). Jesus was clearly not castigating Martha for her hard-working service, done out of love for him. What he was saying, however, was that none of those efforts was strictly-speaking essential, that there was no reason to get worked about them, and that there was something more important to focus on, something that Mary realized and that Martha as yet hadn’t.
• Here’s what Mary recognized: Jesus had come to their home primarily not to be fed, but to feed. The welcome he sought most was their time, their friendship, their love, their open ears and open hearts. Mary understood 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 as that.
• In these interactions in Bethany with Martha and Mary, Jesus was indicating to them, to the apostles, and to us the one thing necessary, so that we, too, might identify the better part, choose it, and then set our minds and hearts on acting in accordance with it.
• So let’s get practical and make his conversation with Martha and Mary consequential in our life.
• The first thing we need to consider is the hospitality we give to 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? Or are we, like Martha, too caught up, anxious, and distracted by less important things that we’re welcoming into our minds and souls each day such that we no longer have the energy or space to invite in Christ? That leads to the second point.
• We’re called to imitate Mary in choosing the better part and 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. One of the most common problems facing many even faithful Catholics today, and preventing our spiritual growth, is that we put many things ahead of God, on Sunday, on Monday and throughout the week. We know God exists, we believe in what we profess in the Creed, but, rather than treating our relationship with him as the “one thing necessary,” we allow him to slip down the ladder of our priorities such that we no longer make time for him in prayer or even at Sunday Mass. Four weeks ago, the Church in the U.S. began a three-year Eucharistic Revival, which is a grace-filled time for us to get our priorities straight, by making practical what we believe about him in the Eucharist. If we really believe that the Eucharist is indeed Jesus and if we truly love him, we will want to come to spend time sitting at his feet in prayerful adoration and even more wondrously to receive him at Mass.
• The third and final application is to Martha. 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 Jesus in work, at school, in family life and beyond that we’ll be getting fed by him in action — and become his instruments to feed others not just by our work but with the One working within us. That’s the vocation of every Christian. And one of the most important forms of service we can give to others is to help them to form the true priorities that will bring them to happiness, holiness and heaven. Jesus wants to send us as missionaries to show them by our witness and words how to choose the better part, how happily to make God the true priority of our life, in the midst of so many modern distractions and anxieties that leave people without a sure compass and spinning out of control. 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.
• When we go to Mass on the Lord’s Day, in the modern Bethany of our parish Church, we will have the privilege, like Mary, to listen at Jesus’ feet while feeds us with his word and to nourish us even more profoundly with his flesh and blood. We ask him, through this nourishment, to give us the courage to reorder the priorities of our life, and to base our lives on what he indicates in his conversation with these two sisters. Jesus is the one thing necessary. Mary chose the better part. After Jesus’ gentle correction, Saint Martha, we believe, ultimately did, too. Now let us ask them to intercede for us before Jesus’ feet in heaven for the grace to make the same choice today, tomorrow and each day going forward, and to help us become apostles sent out to help others order their life to the one thing necessary, to choose it, and to come to the heavenly Bethany.

The homily was based on the following Gospel passage: 

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