The Conversion to Choosing the Better Part, 27th Tuesday (II), October 9, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Blessed John Henry Newman
October 9, 2018
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 grasped that 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 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. 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 combined. Mary showed how much she understood the practical consequences of Jesus’ value when he and his apostles visited their home again, just a few days 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 had. Jesus was the “better part,” better than anything or anyone else. He was the one thing necessary. To sit at his feet is to anoint them.
• In today’s first reading, we likewise see an important part of the conversion to which God calls us. 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 that 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 works 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 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 did 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 but was focusing 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 Jesus in work, at school and in family life that we’ll be getting fed by him in action so that we might 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.
• Today the Church celebrates the memorial of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman. He was one of the most prodigious writers in the history of Christianity, but it all came from his prayer life. He chose the Lord as the better part and continued to choose him even when it was very difficult, such as what he needed to endure in following the truth all the way across the Tiber and becoming a Catholic. His motto, “Cor ad cor loquitur,” as Pope Benedict said when he beatified him in 2010, is meant to make us one with Christ’s heart and Christ’s desire for unity: “Cardinal Newman’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur, or ‘Heart speaks unto heart,’ gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. … Blessed John Henry’s teaching on prayer explains how the faithful Christian is definitively taken into the service of the one true Master, who alone has a claim to our unconditional devotion (cf. Mt 23:10).” Cardinal Newman wants us to enter into that heart-to-heart with the Lord, sitting with open hearts before him as he speaks to us, as he feeds us, as he gradually transforms us into his likeness.
• At today’s Mass, in the modern Bethany of this Church, we, too, like Mary, have a chance to imitate Mary in welcoming 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. Mary chose the better part. Now we beg Saints Martha and Mary and all the saints to intercede for us before Jesus’ feet in heaven for the grace to make the same 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: