When you got up this morning, what was your frame of mind? Let me share with you my typical day in getting ready for Mass. I get up, make some coffee, clean up, get dressed and think about what time I have to leave, worry about the route I’m going to take, wonder if I’ll get there on time, hope that everything is here that I need to set up and make sure that the Mass will go as smoothly as possible… not to mention hoping that my sermon was good enough!
As I contemplated on our readings for today, especially the Gospel, I realized that I was emulating Martha. Not that these aren’t things that have to be done… because they are. It is more in my frame of mind that I had in doing these things. Like Martha, I was worried, focused on my feelings and anxious.
How many times do we do this? How many times do we go about our business of trying to do what we think will please God and end up putting Him in second place due to the busyness? The contrast that Christ gives us here is Mary. Mary is sitting at Christ’s feet… giving Him her undivided attention. While Christ says that Mary has chosen the ‘better part,’ He doesn’t say that it is the complete answer.
Let’s look at the situation present in the scenario of the Gospel. Martha is having a gathering at her house and many people are present—including Jesus—who is presumably the guest of honor. Martha, as the hostess, is naturally concerned that everyone there is having a good time and has what they need for their enjoyment of their time there. In a way, she is honoring her guest of honor. However, she has forgotten to spend time with him, since she is so busy. In her frustration, she asks Him to have Mary leave His company to help her—in effect to leave her position of being a true hostess and honoring His presence to go about the busyness with Martha.
Notice here how Christ is not diminishing the fact that activity is an essential element of faith. This story comes immediately after the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel. Here, the story highlights the importance of action in faith. However, the action here in the story of Jesus, Martha and Mary is not in faith but AROUND faith.
What does that mean for us? Well, for us, we need to realize that living a life in Christ means that there are two responsibilities—to know Him and to serve Him. These two ideas cannot exist apart from each other, though. We cannot serve Him without knowing Him, and we cannot truly know Him without serving Him. So, one point of this story that St. Luke has included here is that whatever we do, we need to do for the right reasons… Jesus—and His teachings— MUST permeate every aspect of our lives and actions.
There is another point here as well, one that I think we miss when we hear this well-known story, and one that gives much more insight on why Mary has chosen the better part. The world that Jesus lived in was extremely patriarchal. Women were only good for basically two things—producing sons and serving men. Martha was doing the commonly accepted activity for the time. Mary, on the other hand, was breaking a taboo by listening to the teachings of the rabbi, something that only men were allowed to do. So, not only was Martha asking for help with her work, but she was also asking Jesus to enforce the male/female role. Jesus, however, saw that all were equal and allowed Mary to remain in His presence.
In our own time, I think that we tend to do similar things. Here in 2010 I would dare say that we still tend to classify each other. How many of us, on seeing someone new, come to immediate conclusions about them based on certain exterior characteristics? Even the members of our families—how many times have we expected them to act a certain way merely because they are male or female? Wives, how many times have you expected your husbands to not have any emotions? Husbands, how many times have you accused your wives of being overemotional? Perhaps we are not so tied to the traditional physical functions with regard to gender, but I think there are certain things that we still ARE tied to with regard to roles—be they gender-based, racially based, etc…
The problem with this approach is that when we do this, we do two things—we not only keep ourselves from being the completely free person that Christ wants us to be to love Him unconditionally—since Christ is in each and every single one of us, but we also keep those whom we are expecting to act in a certain way from being completely free to love Christ as well since we are placing them in a box. The answer to this lies in Christ’s answer to Martha—“Mary has chosen the better part.”
Our answer to this—again—lies in emulating Christ Himself. He wasn’t concerned with any type of exterior roles or expectations being placed on any body—He took, and takes, each person as His unique creation and loves them unconditionally. Also, Christ isn’t concerned with placing a priority on the mundane realities of daily life. Not that there wasn’t a place for them. As a carpenter, I can only imagine His workshop if He wasn’t concerned AT ALL about keeping it clean—however that wasn’t His priority. His priorities were: 1) His relationship with His Heavenly Father; 2) His relationship with His earthly family; 3) His relationships with others and teaching them; 4) The other things of daily living. It is only through the proper prioritizing of the other 3 that the 4th one takes on any significance whatsoever.
So, as we journey through our week in faith, perhaps we can take a moment, take stock of our lives, see where our priorities lie and use Christ as a model for where we find ourselves lacking.
No comments:
Post a Comment