16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The world is always beckoning us to live and to orient ourselves to its priorities and goals, and it often makes very compelling cases for this. We all know that there are certain things we must do to simply survive and hopefully even thrive within our secular lives. We want to provide a good home and a place of comfort and safety for ourselves and our families, and perhaps even to pursue some niceties that will allow us some enjoyment. Like most things, these desires can be good things when kept in balance with the rest of our life’s aspects, in particular the spiritual side of our lives. This is something though that each of us, as people of faith, need to be vigilant about. 

In our Gospel today, we hear the narrative about Martha and Mary, and what is initially conveyed as a lack of balance in the division of the work between them. Yet the lack of balance is perhaps not as clear cut as it might seem on the surface. True Martha is busily and dutifully preparing all the little things that made the gathering more pleasant for those there, and it looks as though perhaps Mary is not quite keeping up her end of the bargain. Yet it is far from that simple. First, let me acknowledge, we all need Martha’s in our lives, these are people who get the day-to-day necessities accomplished, without fanfare or even sought recognition, and yet their role is crucial to the rest of us, but sometimes there needs to be a balance struck. I think we can understand Martha’s wanting to show hospitality to our Lord and His followers, but can you imagine being so caught up in work, that you allow the opportunity to listen to the words of God in your own home slip past you? 

 I would be willing to bet that we all know some Mary’s as well, and I do not mean that in the sense that we know some who are not doing as much in the way of work, no, I am referring to those individuals who are very often attuned to the more spiritual aspects of both their own lives and those of others, and so help us gain in wisdom and spiritual insight. This is not to say they do not also participate in the daily work, just as I suspect Mary in today’s Gospel did under more usual circumstances, yet the presence of our Lord at their home made the situation anything but usual, and she did not let the opportunity to spend that time with our Lord pass her by, just as we shouldn’t.  

You see Mary, saw in Jesus something important enough that it eclipsed her own desire to work and to please others in the worldly sense of serving or hospitality. She saw through her spiritual eyes what she and so many others had been waiting for all their lives, the Messiah who had been foretold. All the regular concerns of daily life and her worldly responsibilities suddenly seemed trivial, and she sought nothing more than to sit at the Teachers feet and listen to His words. As our Lord himself said, she chose the better part.  

It can be just as easy for us to become too wrapped up in the daily pursuits that may seem so important to us at the time, and yet, these can sometimes blind us to what is truly important in the eyes of God. We can become so immersed that we do not perceive what our Lord has in mind for us to learn, or to see others in need of our love and time that might be evident if we took a bit more notice.  

As members of the body of Christ, each of us is called to participate in that body, and when we do so, there is a balance maintained similar to that of a healthy physical body. Yet this calls for us to engage on a spiritual level consistently in our lives, and to look through the lenses of the soul to be able to perceive the lessons our Lord wishes to impart, to be aware of the needs of those created in His image, and to permit the self-awareness of our own shortcomings to allow us to do better. It is through this level of coexistence and participation in His body that we too may choose the better part.