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When we were doing theology, we used to live in Barangka, Marikina. For two years, we took turns doing the house chores. When it came to dish washing, the work always seemed interminable. I mean, you had this feeling (while in the thick of it, suds and all) that the piling of plates and pans to be washed would never end. And so it was for me always a relief to see an empty sink at the end of it all. Of course, the relief lasted only until the next round of eating.

There is Martha in the kitchen today, fussing all over the servings to be made for their special VIP guest, Jesus. And there too her sister Mary, “who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.” Whose side would you take? Who would you admire? Who would upset you? The one sitting pretty or the one sweating it out before the stove?

If you’re an “ate” (older sister) type of person, you would commiserate with Martha and take the prodigal sister to task. After all, someone has to do the hospitality. The listening and chika can come later, over food on the table. But the table has to be set, the dishes prepared. What would happen to us if all the Martha’s of the world gave up the kitchen and went for the living room?

Even in the first reading today, you see Abraham and Sarah doing a Martha, fussing over the details of hospitality, trying to accommodate the three strangers in their midst. To his wife Sarah, he says, “Quick, three measures of fine flour! Knead it and make rolls.” Then he runs “to the herd” to get some choice steak, “some curds and milk, as well as the steer that had been prepared, and set[s] these before the three men; and he wait[s] on them under the tree while they [eat].”

First of all, hospitality (for which we galante Filipinos are known) is never really an equal or fair transaction. Abraham did not know those men from Adam and still he lavishes upon them this extraordinary meal, even if they had done nothing (yet) to deserve such profuse VIP treatment. 

There is no fair exchange or return on investment when it comes to hospitality. When heart (or hearth) is opened to receive God and others, loosen your expectations of parity.

Second of all, the hospitality is done with eagerness and lightness. However taxing it is to wait on others, ultimately the hospitality is not heavy. This is why when the Lord says, “Martha, Martha,” it is to chide her tenderly for “being burdened with much serving.”

Poor Martha, the Lord tells us, is “anxious and worried about many things.” She is burdened with the work and by the unfairness of it all. But the Lord is not asking her to give up the kitchen (she is probably better at it than Mary); he is asking her to give up the heaviness in her heart.

In a meeting last week for a hospital we are putting up, the doctors came up with a foundational statement of their role. They acknowledged and wrote simply that “service is a privilege.” Those four simple words can spell all the difference between bondage and freedom, between bitterness and lightness, between those burdens that bring you to burnout and those that give you a heart on fire.

If service were seen merely as entitlement or transaction (that is, as something that can be demanded as a matter of right or exchange), then the burden of serving can eventually become unbearable. I know from experience that when I lose this sense of being privileged and honored to serve others and God, when I forget that all (even the serving) is gift undeserved, then I grow tired and weary more easily.

Third of all, to use computer-speak, the hospitality focuses not on the host (or server) but on the guest (or client). People have used this passage to make trite conclusions about the primacy of contemplation over action, of contemplative listening over active service. Mary chose the better part because the better part then and there was for the guest to speak and for the rest to stay beside him at his feet to listen.

Even if the host needed to cook, the guest needed to speak. At that point, the Lord did not need the serving so much as the stillness to listen. There will be times when the Lord would rather have us out of the kitchen and all hushed up in the living room to hear him speak. But surely there will be other occasions as well when the Lord would rather have us busy and moving about in the kitchen.

The gospel doesn’t tell it, but my hunch is that when Jesus finally took leave of the sisters, Martha didn’t have to tell Mary to do the dishes.

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Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin SJ is President of Xavier University, Ateneo de Cagayan. For feedback on this column, e-mail [email protected]