Martha and Mary

Our Gospel reading today is quite a short one. But it teaches us the ways on how we must learn to love God especially in this day of modernism and relativism where God is no longer important to people, including many Catholics. This gospel is about the two women who are very close friends of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can read it in Luke 10: 38-42.

“ [Jesus] entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. 39 She had a sister named Mary [who] sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. 40 Martha burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” 41 The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. 42 There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

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Have you ever asked yourself “How do we love a girl or a boy?” The usual response to this question is, you want to always be with that person. If the person you love is away, you are always uneasy, anxious and never comfortable. This is why people in love get married because they love each other so much they want to live together and in the process they produce offspring, whom they both love and share this love together.

Once I watched a short episode on EWTN where an American bishop was teaching his audience how do we love God. The only way for us humans to learn to love God is to merely use our human instincts in loving another person. His teaching was simple and logical. He said to love God is really not much different in loving another person, where you want to be near that person. So the bishop suggested to go and make frequent visits to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and be with Him. This is what I have learned to do since my Christian renewal and perhaps it is the only place on this earth that brings me total peace and solitude.

Loving another person means becoming friends with his friends. So we should make friends also with the people who also love God or with whom God loves and that’s the poor. Then he added that while in courtship, chances are you want to be close to the mother or father of the person you love, so the bishop suggested that you should also be devoted to the Mother of Jesus, our Immaculate Virgin Mother and St. Joseph.

In this very short gospel story of Martha and Mary, our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us what should be the priority in our lives? If you remember,the first of the Ten Commandments is to love God and there should be no other gods before him, or what our Lord taught about the Greatest Commandment, which the Jews of ancient times and even today recite in the Shema, “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” then you should know that loving God is the most important thing in our lives.

So when Martha complained to the Lord that her sister Mary wasn’t helping her in serving the Lord, our Lord told her “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” In short, Martha’s act of serving our Lord is not important to God, as loving him should be the most important thing to do. That’s exactly what Mary was doing.

This is akin to a mother who owns a family restaurant where her children help in serving their customers. One day her daughter decided to join the convent but the mother protested as keeping the family business is more important for her. But the daughter joined the convent anyway because loving God will not be taken away from her.

In Luke 12: 22-23 our Lord tells us, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing.” In verse 25 Jesus said, “Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your lifespan?” Then finally on verse 25 he said, “As for you, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not worry anymore.” No wonder one of the beautiful sayings of St. Padre Pio was, “You pray, you hope and you don’t worry.”

One of St. Augustine’s famous quotes is, “My heart is restless O God until it rests in thee.” In Matthew 6: 20-21 the Lord tells us, “But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Again, it is time to pause and ponder… and ask yourself, have I made God the priority in my life? If you have, then God will shower you with all his blessings!

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