Thursday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 29, 2021

The Feast of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

John 11, 19-27

Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother [Lazarus, who had died]. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her,”I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

Formerly, St. Martha alone was celebrated on this day, but recently the feast was expanded to include her brother St. Lazarus, and her sister, St. Mary, who lived in Bethany, near Jerusalem.  The St. Mary celebrated today is not St. Mary Magdalene, who stood at the Lord’s Cross and was the first to see the Risen Lord after his Resurrection, but “Mary of Bethany”.  St. Gregory the Great seems to have been the first to conflate these two distinct women.  

From the three accounts in the Gospels which involve Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, we can see their close connection to the Lord.  In Luke 10, 38-42, Jesus enters “Martha’s house” and talks to an enraptured Mary while Martha struggles to prepare dinner.  It would seem from this that either Martha owned the house outright or that it was the house of Lazarus, whom Luke did not know about, and that Martha lived there.  We are not told that Martha was married, so if the house was hers, she might have been a widow.  It could also be the case that Luke does not mention spouses or Lazarus in order to keep his story simple, because the presence or absence of anyone except Martha, Mary, and Jesus does not affect the main point.  

In John 11, 1, the Evangelist tells us, “Now, there was a certain man sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, of the town of Mary and of Martha her sister.”  The implication here is that the three siblings did not live together, but separately.  A further implication is that these three were well-known to the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem to whom John was writing his Gospel, for the names of those for whom Jesus performs miracles are almost never given.  John also here identifies Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, as “she that anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair”.  He mentions this even before he tells the story how she did this (which he would do in the chapter following the raising of Lazarus) leading us to believe that the story was very well-known at the time of his writing.

The Lord loved these three, as is clear from the story of his raising Lazarus from the dead.  Indeed, when Mary notifies the Lord that her brother is in need of healing, she says, “Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.”  And John comments, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary and Lazarus.”  They firmly believed in him as the Messiah, and as one with great power.  When the Lord arrives in Bethany, Martha says to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But now also I know that whatsoever you will ask of God, God will give to you.”  And Mary will say to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Mary’s faith and her gratitude for the Lord raising up her brother bring her to anoint his feet with a very expensive perfume, and to wipe his feet with her hair.  (This is anointing is distinct, though similar, from that done by the sinful woman in Luke 7, 36-50, which took place in Simon the Leper’s house, not in that of Lazarus.)  

“Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”  This profession of faith spoken by Martha, reflected the faith of her brother and sister as well.  No one but Peter would make such a profession before the Lord’s Resurrection.  We pray to Saint Martha, that she might obtain for us the grace to be filled with such faith as hers; to her sister Mary, that we may become as dedicated to the Word of God as she; and to Lazarus, that we may hear the Lord saying to us at the moment of our deaths, “Come forth!”, summoning us into his life in heaven.