Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Ordinary Time

  • Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The Church’s Catechism tells us that “Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life. The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause.” (CCC, 1808) Jesus puts it even more succinctly in today’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” He wants us to be a people on fire, a people who will not waver in our pursuit of living the Gospel, a people who will not back down in the face of obstacles or even oppression, a people who live their faith joyfully and with firm conviction that our God is trustworthy and faithful. The Christian believer is called to exercise the virtue of fortitude because nothing else is worthy of our God.

    Nobody says fortitude is easy. Jesus himself was very realistic about this, and warns us today that fortitude in living the Christian life can be a very divisive way of life. The disciple can and will run into all sorts of oppression, and can even lead to broken relationships with those who are dearest to us. If that Gospel calls upon us to take an unpopular position, and speak up on behalf of the poor, the alien, the prisoner, or a pro-life position, we may even find that some of our friends or family cannot go there with us. Being a Christian can make us feel like foreigners in our own land. It’s as if we are carrying a passport from another place. And we are, for those who are first of all citizens of God’s reign, Jesus’ vision and values come first in our lives. All because Jesus has come to set a blazing fire on the earth and that fire burns already in us.

    Today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews makes it clear that we aren’t running the race of fortitude alone. We have at our disposal the support and encouragement of a “great cloud of witnesses” which the Church calls the Communion of Saints. Some of these people may have already died, but their lives remain as testimony to the virtue of fortitude. Perhaps these people were friends or relatives who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith, loved ones who were examples of unselfish commitment. Or maybe they are relative strangers to us, people whose courage in the face of death has caused us to stand in awe. They may be people among us who are still alive, people in the neighborhood or in the workplace or at school whose friendliness brightened our day. This great cloud of witnesses cheers us on, and are God’s way of helping us to live lives marked by fortitude.

    Very often on the journey of discipleship, we may find that the oppression and division that the Gospel causes casts us down. Like poor Jeremiah in today’s first reading, maybe we find that we have been thrown into a cistern of despair or hopelessness. Fortitude is the virtue that helps us in the midst of all that, to wait with faithfulness on Ebed-melech the Cushite to come to our rescue and draw us up out of the pit.

    The truth is, today’s Liturgy of the Word can come across as very negative. Who wants to hear about being cast into a cistern? Are we eager to find that we are going to be in angry division with those we love most? The temptation to let all of this go in one ear and out the other, remaining instead in the comfort of our luke-warmness is almost overwhelming. But that’s just not good enough. We can’t live that way and still call ourselves disciples. It is not enough to love God in our heads. We are told in the book of Revelation how God wishes to spew the luke-warm among us out of his mouth. We need to be on fire, actively living the graces of baptism that we have received – to live with fortitude, integrity, conviction, fervor, and burning zeal. We have to be willing to live in the shadow of the cross, where we resolve all our divisions and receive the baptism that promotes Gospel peace.

  • Saturday of the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” My family has had a plaque with that very verse on it for as long as I can remember. This has always been one of my favorite quotes from Scripture. But it certainly is a hard thing to say, and Joshua makes that very clear in today’s first reading. Serving the Lord makes demands of us. We are called to live the Gospel and serve the poor and love everyone as we love God and forgive, and so much more. We are also told that we have to turn away from the worship of other gods, whatever those might be for us. Are they the gods of wealth, success, prestige, or self-interest? We must turn away from them. Are they gods that hold us back, bound to our own comfort, reluctance, or apathy? We must cast all of that out. Serving the Lord requires nothing less than total self-giving, because the Lord has first given everything to us.

    The kingdom of heaven, as Jesus reminds us today, belongs to those who are like children before him. We must become childlike in our trust and obedience to the one who gives us life, love and salvation. We are called to decide today whom we will serve. Will it be the Lord, or someone or something else? For those of us who step forward to receive the Eucharist today, the answer must always and only be, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

  • Thursday of the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    God always gives us a way out. The Israelites could celebrate that twice. Twice they came up against the obstacle of the deep waters. The first was on the way out of Egypt, and Moses was able to raise his hands with the power of God and part the waters of the Red Sea so the Israelites could pass to the other side in safety, then resume the flow so that their pursuers perished in the deep. In today’s first reading, we’re on the other end of the story. This time it is the new leader of the community, Joshua, who is able to raise his arms with the power of God to stop the flow of the Jordan, and allow the Israelites to pass over dry land to the promised land.

    Would that the indebted man in today’s Gospel would have seen the way out and taken it. He had been forgiven his whole debt, but did not learn that the only way to true freedom was forgiveness. So his way out closed up with him in the midst of it, and he was dragged off to prison.

    God gives us all a way out of whatever it is that is troubling us. Sometimes all the troubles don’t go away, but the way out gives us the opportunity to experience the strength of our God. What we need to do is to take the way out and move forward in discipleship. So if we’ve been forgiven, we need to forgive. If we have been blessed, we need to bless others. If we have been comforted, we need to comfort. You get the idea.

    In our Eucharist today, God gives us the incredible way out of death, by finding our life in the Eucharist and leading us to eternal life. Blessed are we who receive it.

  • Monday of the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    A conventional piece of Christian wisdom tells us to “love what Jesus loved when he was on the cross, and despise what Jesus despised when he was on the cross.” We get that same message from Moses today in the first reading. He tells the Israelites that the high and mighty God loves the widow, the orphan, and the alien, and because of that, they too must love the widow, the orphan, and the alien. That is actually a common theme of all of the prophets.

    In our day, loving what Jesus loved when he was on the cross might mean reaching out to those in need: the poor, the hungry, the homeless, those oppressed in any way. It might mean binding up wounds: old hurts, casual slights, or pervasive anger. It means forgiving as we have been forgiven, loving the person but hating the sin. We are called upon to extend ourselves and to go beyond our own pettiness to love sacrificially. We might not be nailed to a cross, but we may well have to die to our own interests and needs in order to love as Jesus calls us.

    What do we have that is not God’s gift to us? The Psalmist says today: “He has granted peace in your borders; with the best of wheat he fills you.” We benefit eternally from the great sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. As we remember the grace we have been given in celebrating the Eucharist today, let it be our prayer that we would come to love as he has loved, no matter what the cost.

  • Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word, brothers and sisters in Christ, is a kind of handbook, I think, for the Christian disciple. Those of us who would follow in the steps of Jesus are given several wonderful pearls of wisdom which are meant to guide us on the way. So today, I thought it would be good to reflect on them, even though they may seem disjointed, and see where they are leading us. So let’s roll up our sleeves and work through them.

    The first pearl comes from our second reading from the letter to the Hebrews. The first like is perhaps one of the best known verses of Scripture: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Faith is something we all strive to have, but faith is really a gift. We long to be people of faith because it is faith that gives peace in the midst of uncertainty. Faith, as the author points out, is not the same thing as proof. Proof requires evidence, and faith usually provides none of that. Faith, perhaps, is not knowing what will happen, but instead knowing the one in whom we trust. If we know our God is trustworthy, then we don’t need to know all the details of what is ahead of us; instead, we can trust in the One who leads us. The more that we exercise that faith, the more our faith grows.

    The next three pearls of wisdom come from our Gospel today. We could really divide that Gospel into three parts, with the wisdom saying at or near the end of each part. The first of these is “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” This part looks a lot like the continuation of last week’s Gospel. Last week we were cautioned not to store up worthless treasure in barns, but instead to invest in whatever will lead us to heaven. Today’s saying is kind of an examination of conscience along that same line of teaching. Here Jesus is inviting us to look at exactly what has been our treasure. Has it been success, power, prestige and wealth? Or has it been compassion, nurturing, mercy and justice? Have we put all of our energies into our work or play time, or have we spent time on our families, in our prayer life, and in works of mercy? What is our treasure? If our treasure is in things of the world, then our heart will be in the world and we will have no chance for salvation. But if our treasure is in our true home in heaven, then that’s where we will find our heart and our salvation.

    The next pearl comes at the end of a teaching on the need for watchfulness and waiting. It’s almost an Advent theme right here in mid-August. Here, Jesus says to us: “You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” We do all sorts of waiting. We wait in the grocery line and in the doctor’s office. We wait for friends or family to join us at the dinner table. We wait for job offers, for the right person in our relationships, and we wait for the right direction in our lives. In all of our waiting, Jesus tells us today, we must be prepared for the outpouring of God’s grace. If we are distracted by worldly things and worldly activities, we may miss that grace as it is poured out right before us. If we are caught up in things that have no permanence, we may miss our opportunity to follow Christ to our salvation. We must always be prepared for the Son of Man to come into our lives.

    And the final pearl is one of my favorites, perhaps the most challenging words I have ever had spoken to me. It comes right at the end of the Gospel today: “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” When I was in seminary, they used to put it in the words of another translation of this verse: “From those to whom much has been given, much will be expected.” Think about it. We are citizens of the richest nation on earth. We live in perhaps the wealthiest city in the wealthiest counties in that nation. We worship freely, without threat of death or incarceration. Our children have opportunities for education beyond the wildest imaginings of those in other nations, or even in most cities of our country. We sit here in an air conditioned Church and worship with great music, vibrant ministries, and committed ministers of all kinds. We have truly been given much – much more than most people can dream of, much more than we deserve at any given point in our lives. Grace is all around us. So what are we giving in return? Much has been given, and much will be expected. If we are not living our faith every day, if we are not giving back to our world from what we have been given, then we are guilty of stealing it. Much is expected of us disciples, and perhaps today’s Scriptures are calling us to reflect on how we have been delivering on that expectation.

    All of these pearls of wisdom are – to use a corporate expression that I absolutely loathe – “raising the bar” in our faith life. The letter to the Hebrews calls us to live our faith and not just say we have faith. Jesus in the Gospel tells us to take that faith and do something with it. He calls us to find treasure in the things of heaven, to wait for our salvation with eager longing, and to give from the rich treasure of that which we have been given. This coming year, our parish vision has us reflecting on stewardship, reflecting on what we have been given and what we are doing with it. Today’s Liturgy of the Word is a great way to start our reflections along those lines. We rejoice today to be God’s people, to gather around the table of Word and Sacrifice. As the Psalmist says so eloquently today: “Blessed,” indeed happy, “the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.”

  • Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word gives us no summer break. There is no rest for the weary here. Listen to the last line of that Gospel one more time: “Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” So right away that parable is turned around and directed at all of us. And it wouldn’t be so hard to put that parable in modern terms, would it? Think of winning the lottery, only to know that the day you receive the check is the day you go home to the Lord. Or even better, think of spending your days and nights in the office, building wealth and prestige, only to be part of massive layoffs when the company is sold. Or, even worse, spending your days and nights at the office, only to miss the growing of your family. So, Jesus asks us, what treasures have we built up? With what have we filled our barns?

    Today’s first reading is from the book of Ecclesiastes, which in Hebrew is Qoheleth, who is the teacher in the book. Among the Wisdom books in the Scriptures, Ecclesiastes can be the hardest to read because it is almost prophetic in content. Qoheleth is considered wise among his contemporaries, much like many of the popular wisdom teachers of his day. He often wrote of the prizes that lay in store for those who were successful. But this book is a little different. Here he questions if it is all worth it, and challenges the complacence and dishonesty that run rampant in that society. If we didn’t know any better, he could well have been writing his words today, couldn’t he? In the end, though, Qoheleth’s message is basically encouraging, and brings us back to the God who made us. At the end of his book, which is not part of today’s reading, he says: “The last word, when all is heard: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man’s all; because God will bring to judgment every work, with all its hidden qualities, whether good or bad.” (Ecc. 12:13-14) Which is exactly what Jesus is telling us in today’s Gospel.

    St. Paul has a little bit of Qoheleth in him too, today. In the letter to the Colossians, which we have been hearing these past few weeks, he is trying to get that community to lay aside earthly things and seek God. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? “If you were raised with Christ,” he tells them, “seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” In other words, stop filling your barns with the stuff that you accumulate on this earth, and be rich in what matters to God. Qoheleth, St. Paul, and Jesus are in complete concert today, and we must be careful to hear their message. St. Paul, typical for him, is very blunt about what he is asking us to lay aside: “Put to death then,” he tells us, “the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.” And, “stop lying to one another.” We are called to be disciples who are pure, compassionate and truthful, because absolutely nothing else will lead us to the kingdom of God!

    So, let’s get back to Jesus’ instruction at the end of today’s Gospel parable: “Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” We have to ask ourselves, then, the very important question: “what is it that matters to God.” I think we know what doesn’t qualify – St. Paul made that very clear. We’ll never get to the gates of heaven and have St. Peter say, “well, you know, you should have spent more time at the office and less time with your family.” I think the things that matter to God are those things we might count among our blessings: namely our family and friends. Those things that matter to God might also be the things that make us disciples who are pure, compassionate and truthful. So we might seek to be rich in prayer, rich in reaching out to the poor and needy, rich in standing up for truth and justice. These, brothers and sisters in Christ, are the riches that will not spoil and can never be taken away from us.

    Today, as the Psalmist tells us, we have heard God’s voice. May we never harden our hearts to his message for us.

  • Friday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    [Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus]

    What kinds of mighty deeds is the Lord Jesus trying to do in our own lives? Is he finding success there, or have we put up obstacles through our own lack of faith?

    Today we celebrate a Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for this First Friday. In this celebration, we realize that the “native place” of our Lord is in our own hearts. As he pours out the love of his Sacred Heart on us, he takes up residence in our own hearts in order to guide us and bring us to salvation. And so we cannot be like those in Jesus’ hometown who would give him no honor in his native place. We must joyfully give Christ honor in our hearts and let his love pour forth in all that we do and say this day and every day.

    And just as Moses taught the people to observe the Lord’s commands for worship and rest on the Sabbath, so we too must carefully observe time for worship and rest in our own hearts, communing with our God who longs to warm us with his presence as the very blood flows through our bodies and who longs to guide the rhythm of our days just like the beating of our own hearts. May we all find a moment of our day today for contemplation to appreciate the presence of the Lord in our hearts and in our lives. May the mighty deeds the Lord longs to do in us pour forth from his Sacred Heart, which resides in the hearts of all of us.

  • Monday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    There are so many places I could go with today’s first reading: it give us so many opportunities to look at leadership and the spiritual life. But I think what leapt out at me today is that Moses asks Aaron the exact right question: “What did this people ever do to you that you should lead them into so great a sin?” My moral theology professor in seminary, a crusty old Jesuit that never minced any words, told us that leading a person into sin is the worst thing one could do to that person. It would be better, he used to tell us, to murder them in cold blood. Now, I’m not sure I’d tell you to make that choice, but he has a point. Leading another person into sin is an act that erodes that person’s conscience, it takes them out of relationship with God and the Church. God forbid that any of us would ever lead another person into sin.

    I was thinking of this yesterday before I even knew what were today’s readings. Fr. Ted and I were talking on Saturday night about the new Planned Parenthood abortion clinic near Fox Valley Mall. He told me that Planned Parenthood didn’t even tell their contractors how the building would be used, because they knew some contractors would have objected and not worked on the building. Planned Parenthood led those people into sin, just as they lead so many into sin by counseling for abortion. Now, the fact that those contractors didn’t know what the building was used for mitigates their sin, but Planned Parenthood still bears the responsibility for doing that, because leading those people into sin was clearly their intent.

    To all of this, Jesus tells us that we must be the mustard seed and the leaven that brings forth the Kingdom of heaven. Even in the face of so much evil and malicious intent, just a small act of faith on our part can lead people to the Kingdom, which is our role as disciples. Saying a prayer for anyone going to the clinic might soften hearts and lead to life. A small donation to a group like Women’s Choice Services or volunteering in a Project Gabriel ministry might make it possible for a child’s life to be saved. We can be the parable that Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel, announcing what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world, helping to bring people to the Kingdom, even one soul at a time.

  • Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word gives us a welcome look at the urgent need for persistent prayer. In our readings today we see God’s openness to our prayers, we hear a model for our prayers, and we receive some instruction on what prayer should be like. But above all, the point that we must not miss today, is that in the life of the disciple, prayer is to be constant, persistent, and as much a part of our life as breathing.

    This first reading has always intrigued me, ever since I can remember hearing it as a child. God intends to destroy the city of Sodom because of its pervasive wickedness. Abraham, newly in relationship with God, stands up for the innocent of the city, largely because that was where his nephew, Lot, had taken up residence. In what seems to be a case of cosmic “Let’s Make a Deal,” Abraham pleads with God to spare the city if just fifty innocent people could be found there. God agrees and Abraham persists. Eventually God agrees to spare the city if just ten people could be found in the city of Sodom.

    Now we don’t know how many people were living in Sodom, but it was certainly a great many more than fifty. But God agrees to spare the city if just ten just people could be found, a number that was probably some fraction of one percent of the population. Now, we know the rest of the story without even having heard it today, don’t we? Sodom is eventually destroyed for its wickedness, along with the city of Gomorrah. So let’s think about that for a minute. Not even ten good people were found in that area, so great and widespread was their wickedness!

    Now the Old Testament has a number of stories like this where a great many people are destroyed in their wickedness. From this we should not draw the hasty conclusion that we worship a wrathful God. Instead, we worship a God who is just and merciful, not punishing the great many innocent for the wickedness of but a few. It is important, I think, to know that Abraham’s prayer does not really change his unchangeable God. Instead, God always intended to spare the city if there were just people in it, it’s just that there weren’t any just people in it!

    What I love about this first reading is Abraham’s line, “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes!” Here he prefigures the kind of prayer Jesus has in mind for us, who also are but dust and ashes. The prayer Jesus teaches us is amazingly familiar, in the sense of being close to God. Our God is not a distant potentate who has set the world in motion and then stepped back to observe events as they unfold. No, instead our God can be called “Abba, Father” and we can approach God as we would a loving parent. Because of this, we can pray, “Father, hallowed be your name…”

    So far we have learned that prayer never changes our unchangeable God. God always intends the best for us, and it is he himself who puts the prayer into our hearts in the first place. Secondly, our prayer is not a formal request to a distant deity, but instead a personal plea to God who is like a loving parent. I think we can all relate to all of that. But it is the parable that follows the Lord’s Prayer in today’s Gospel that tells us something we have to learn over and over again: prayer must be persistent. This flies in the face of the notion that prayer is not something that changes our God who always intends the best for us. Why do we have to pray the same thing over and over again if God always intends to give us what is best. Put another way, in fact the words I often hear from parishioners who are heartbroken, “Why doesn’t God answer our prayers?”

    Whether you have a sick loved one, or a child who’s gone the wrong way, or a marriage that is troubled, or a job situation that is unhappy, or any one of thousands of other problems, you too may have asked “Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?” Today we’re hearing that we should be persistent in our prayer and that God will answer the prayers of those he loves, and so you may well be asking yourself, “What good does that do?” These are questions I get all the time, and I can understand them, having asked them a time or two myself. So let me give you my take on it with a parable out of my own life.

    When my dad was dying back in May, I was absolutely positive that he was going to be okay. If I had my own way, of course, I would have prayed that he would live another fifty years, but I knew that was selfish. God had made Dad for himself, and I knew that he was going back to be with God. I wanted nothing else for him than that he would be free of pain and happy forever. I was positive that was what was going to happen. The day before he died, he told my aunt, his sister, that he had seem their mom. I knew that the saints had come to take him home. We believe in that, you know: we call it the Communion of Saints. Just before he died, he looked up at the nurse who was attending him and said, “It’s going to be okay.” And of course that was true.

    How did he know it was going to be okay? Because Dad was a man of prayer. He went to Mass with my mom every Sunday and many weekdays too. He prayed his rosary and daily prayers every day. He and I used to go every Holy Thursday to pray before the Blessed Sacrament together. His wonderful life was immersed in prayer and he had no regrets. Everything was going to be okay. And because he was a man of prayer, I knew that I could let him go and that God would take care of him. Prayer is like that; it’s contagious. His example of persistent prayer was one that led me to my vocation.

    The point is this. Praying persistently doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is going to come out the way we want it to, but it does mean that everything is going to come out the way God intended it, which is so much better than our little plans. If we are people of prayer, if we pray persistently, we will be able to see the blessings in the midst of sorrow and to have confidence when everything seems to be falling apart.

    Praying persistently doesn’t mean praying constantly for just one thing. It means praying in all ways, praying in adoration before our beautiful Savior, praying in contrition and repentance for our sinfulness, praying in thanksgiving for our many blessings, praying in supplication for our needs and the needs of all the world. It means praying, above all, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

    The psalmist today says, “Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.” God intends the very best for us, we may be certain of that. And if we are people of persistent prayer, then we will indeed see blessing all around us. My prayer today is that we would all be persistent in prayer, that we would become people of prayer, and that we would never, ever, ever lose heart.

  • Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    xl christ in the house of martha and mary

    Most of the time when I preach, the homily isn’t really for me. There is always something in the Scriptures that speaks to me in some way, but the main message that I receive from God is not necessarily addressed to me. That’s how preaching works: the Word is for all of us, not something the preacher gets to keep for himself. But today’s Scriptures are a little different. They have had something to say to my own spiritual life, and the message has been coming through loud and clear. My guess is, though, that this message isn’t just for me.

    I sometimes say about the Scriptures “this is one of my favorite readings.” Today’s Gospel is the opposite. I have always found this Gospel challenging, and it makes me squirm inwardly every time I hear it. Because I’d always like to be Mary, but most every day I’m called upon to be Martha, and that makes me sad sometimes. As I reflected on my first year of priesthood, I found that I had not taken my yearly retreat, and that the only vacation I took was a few days to help my Dad in the days before he died. Maybe you can relate to this. Perhaps you’d like to spend more time in prayer, or reading the Bible, and instead you have to take care of the children, or you end up working late, or you just plain fall asleep from exhaustion at the end of the day. The truth is, some days we are way more Martha than we are Mary and if you’re like me, you feel a little guilty about that.

    Back in my first year of seminary, I was in charge of the Liturgies for our class. One day we had a class Liturgy and the Rector of the seminary was the celebrant. I was running around like a madman trying to make sure everything was perfect, and that the Rector would have everything he needed for Mass. When we finally got around to hearing the Gospel for the day, it was this one, and I realized I had fallen into the trap of missing what God was telling me while I was “anxious and worried about many things.” I remember sitting there, thinking, “rats.” So it’s no wonder this isn’t one of my favorite Gospels.

    But I have often found when the message isn’t one I’d like to hear, it’s because God is speaking to me about something I need to change in my life. Clearly that’s what’s going on here today. I have also found that when God starts speaking in this way, the best thing I can do is to be still and listen, letting God be God, and trying to find a way to do what he’s asking of me. So maybe all of us who find ourselves a bit too much Martha today can reflect on that message a bit.

    First off, let’s give Martha a bit of a break. Because there is a difference between the very legitimate and laudable act that Mary was doing – listening to the Word of Jesus – and just being plain old lazy. Many of us could be tempted down those roads too, and that’s not praiseworthy. You can’t claim to be “sitting at the feet of Jesus” when you’re just trying to avoid doing anything resembling work! And Martha’s tasks were important ones. The demands of hospitality in the ancient world were taken very seriously. Just as Abraham leapt to his feet in our first reading to welcome the three visitors and provide them with a beautiful meal, so Martha had things to do to care for her own guest.

    But where Martha went down the wrong path was that she let the details of the tasks of hospitality overshadow the hospitality itself. In doing all the things she was doing, she had actually neglected her guest. Perhaps there was a way that she could have provided refreshment to Jesus in a way that didn’t take her outside his company for so long. Maybe a simpler meal would have sufficed. When the details of hospitality overshadow the guest, then it’s not really hospitality at all.

    What’s at stake here is balance in our spiritual life. We are not called upon to make a choice between being Martha and being Mary. We are called upon to be both Martha and Mary. This scripture readings speaks of the service of the disciple, in Greek the word is diakonia, from which we derive our word, deacon. This tells us that the life of the Christian disciple – which is all of us, brothers and sisters in Christ – is about service. What we see in today’s Gospel is that there are two aspects of that service. The first is represented by Martha’s work, and is the kind of service that takes care of what is necessary in order that God’s will would be done: it is a service that reaches out to those in need. The second kind of service is represented by Mary’s work. Her work is one of contemplation: she sits at the feet of Jesus to absorb his words and his presence.

    Both kinds of service are necessary in the life of the Christian disciple. The trick is keeping them in balance. Because it is Mary’s contemplation that gives us the spiritual refreshment necessary to reach out to those in need. And it is Martha’s active service that gives meaning and context to our prayers and our preaching. When we avoid either aspect of service, we are getting it wrong, and perhaps our Gospel today is a tug at our hearts – I know it’s tugging at mine – to get it right.

    So we need to make time for both our work and our prayer. We have to give priority to contemplation and Scripture reading and whatever kind of prayer speaks to us just as much as we give priority to the demands of our vocations, whatever those vocations may be. We have to let God speak to us in our quiet and in our activity, and to remember that doing God’s will sometimes means getting quiet and sitting still long enough for him to speak to our hearts. It may take a lifetime to get this right, but as we put effort into our service of God, we too will be choosing the better part, and it will not be taken from us.