“Anxious and upset about many things.”
The story of Mary and Martha
has always irritated me a bit. You have these two sisters. One of them, Martha,
takes the opportunity to welcome Jesus into their home. The other, Mary, as
soon as Jesus comes in, sits down at his feet and seems to hang on his every
word.
So what is Martha to do? Sit down too, and let the stew boil over? If
she also rests at Jesus’ feet, who is going to serve? How will they eat? What
will they have? Nothing will get done.
Then Jesus gets on her case, telling her that she frets and bothers about many
things and that Mary (of all people) has chosen the better part by just lolling
there doing nothing.
I would like to have been a mouse in that house to hear what Martha might have
answered. “O.K., you two make the dinner, set out the meal, and clean up
the place. I’m tired of working and being unappreciated.”
Perhaps she would
even remind them who had invited Jesus in the first place. At least that is what
I would have said, or maybe muttered into the fire that no one else bothered
to stoke.
Of course, my perfect riposte reveals why Jesus saw fit to chide the Martha in
me. He spots the resentment that rises when I think others are not doing their
shareespecially when I am so dutifully doing mine.
My urgent solicitude
reveals something quite other than generosity. So does my reminder that I, after
all, am why this little get-together is even happening. Poor me, I brood with
perfect logic: If that is the way he wants it, let him have it. “You do
the work, if you think it is so paltry.”
I finally squeeze into the teeny tight hollow of my ego.
Ah, but there are those other days, those lovely times of labor when I’m not
looking over my shoulder at how well I am doing and how little others seem to
accomplish.
Like Abraham’s Sarah with her warm bread, choice meats, and fresh
milk, I can go about my tasks knowing that they, too, are the presence of God.
My work is no longer something exacted of me, toil grudgingly given. Rather,
it flows freely, a display of how good it is to be alive, to be here, to be now.
The Martha in my mind is not distracted on those good days. Nor do I feel any
need to complain to God that others around are not following my script. Best
of all, I do not complain that I am doing it all by myself.
Those days are rare. But when they arrive I realize that my annoyance with the
story of Mary and Martha is not about the value of work, but about the way we
work. Martha, like me, need not stop the labor. We just need to stop the fuss.
There is Martha, that saint, in all of us. Just as there is Mary a saint as well.
In fact, there is probably a lot of Mary in Martha and a lot of Martha in Mary.
The challenge is in letting them get along. And when we sit down before the feet
of God, let not our Martha fail to rejoice in the moment. And when we go about
preparing the meals of life, let us labor, not with comparisons or resentment,
but with the joy of having seized an opportune moment. |
Father
Kavanaugh was a professor of Philosophy at
St.
Louis University in St. Louis.
His untimely death is a grief for the many people he reached during his lifetime.
Copyright ©
1997 by John F. Kavanaugh. All rights
reserved.
Used by permission from Orbis Books,
Maryknoll, New York 10545-0308
THE WORD ENGAGED:
Meditations on the Sunday Scriptures
Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York (1997), pp. 85-86.
To purchase or learn more about other books
written by Fr. Kavanaugh,
go to http://www.maryknollmall.org/ and
type "Kavanaugh" next to the "SEARCH"
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Art by Martin Erspamer, O.S.B.
from Religious Clip Art for the Liturgical
Year (A, B, and C).
Used by permission of Liturgy Training
Publications. This art may be reproduced only
by parishes who purchase the collection in book
or CD-ROM form. For more information go to:
http://www.ltp.org/
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