Tuesday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time, October 10, 2023

Luke 10, 38-42

Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

Only St. Luke tells us this charming little story of the visit of Jesus to the home of Martha and Mary. 

We customarily think of the Martha and Mary of this story as the sisters of Lazarus, inhabitants of Bethany on the slope of the Mount of Olives, two miles from Jerusalem, but this may not be the case.  Luke does not name the village (according to the Greek text) or show Jesus as this close to Jerusalem, nor does he mention Lazarus (who, to be fair, may have been absent from the village for many reasons).  Also, “Martha” and “Mary” were common Jewish names.  All the same, tradition has always identified these sisters as the sisters of Lazarus.  For the Fathers, the childlike, loyal Mary of this story rings true for the devoted Mary on Golgotha, who brought spices to the tomb, whose love for her Lord brings tears to the eyes, and who saw the Lord after he rose, even before the Apostles did.

“Martha welcomed him.”  Luke indicates that Martha was the older of the two sisters.  The detail that he gives, that it was Martha who welcomed him, also indicates that he must have gotten the story from one of the two sisters.  An Apostle would not have remembered who it was.  That Luke assembled the material for his Gospel by going about Israel and talking to the people who had seen and heard him increases this likelihood.  Now, that Martha welcomed him and not her husband proves that she was not married, and so neither was her younger sister.  She must have been a very young woman, with her parents already deceased.  “She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.”  Mary sat very near to the Lord on the floor, maybe close enough to touch him.  Luke does not say who else was in the house with Jesus and the sisters but we can guess that the Apostles were also present.  She sat on the floor beside him and listened to him speak.  Luke does not tell us what he said, but Mary was captivated.  She neglected her role as a hostess as was demanded by ancient and strict custom, in order to give herself to Christ.  That is, she surrenders her role as hostess so that Jesus becomes the Host, feeding her not with food that banishes hunger for a day but the words of eternal life (cf. John 6, 63).  She knows her true place in the Lord’s house.  Intriguingly, her sitting on the floor near Jesus puts her in the same position as a handmaid.  Whether or not she consciously did this, her example shows us how we ought to listen to him, as servants ready to serve at any moment.  

“Martha, burdened with much serving.”  The work of preparing the midday meal for Jesus and his Apostles overwhelmed Martha, even if she had servants working under her direction.  It could be that the arrival of the Lord to the village caught her unawares and her desire to have Jesus come to her house outstripped the reality of her resources.  She may have had to borrow a goat from a neighbor and had trouble locating one.  She may have underestimated the number of people who would be coming with Jesus.  She may not have had servants or a sufficient number of them so that she needed to borrow them from another household.  She certainly counted on the help of her sister.

“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.”  Martha had let the breach of Mary’s responsibility as a hostess go for a while, but her preparations seem to not go very well and she needs Mary’s help.  Martha is making a prayer here, praying to Jesus to make her sister render her assistance.  Now, how does Jesus answer her prayer? “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”  The Lord sees the older sister doing her best and he soothes her, looking into her eyes and speaking her name over and over in the loving way only he could, and he gently shows her that she did not need to bustle about as she was doing.  She had assumed that she had to feed a full meal to the Lord and his Apostles just as she would have assumed this of anyone she invited to her home.  But this was not just anyone.  And why had she invited him?  Was she struck by his teaching, by his miracles and want to know him more?  Or did she invite him to benefit herself socially in the eyes of her fellow villagers?  Her sister Mary was absolutely entranced by him to the point where hostessing and even food for herself was forgotten.  She was the one who gave the proper welcome and service to the Lord.  Was Martha wrong, then?  Her heart may have been in the right place and her desire to provide a meal for the Lord was good, but she need not have troubled herself greatly.  She could have provided a simple meal, and perhaps, in the end, that is what she did.  But she received much more from Jesus than the heightened esteem of her fellow villagers: a lesson in what matters most.  He had come to serve, not to be served.  He was completely different from anyone who had ever lived. We can hope that she realized the truth, that there was nothing she could offer him that he needed, but that he could offer her everything she needed. The Lord answers her prayer by helping her see from his point of view.  Many time in our lives he answers our prayers this way as well.  

We bustle about so much in our lives but we need not.  We make so many things harder than they have to be.  We can imitate Mary and listen to the Lord and act as he directs us and not as we would prefer to do according to our habits and desires.  The only goal worth having is to be with Jesus Christ.