Reading of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him to her home. She had a sister named Mary, and Mary seated herself at the lord's feet and listened to his words. Martha, on the other hand, who was busy with all the details of hospitality, preparing a big meal open over an open fire, came to Jesus and said, lord, are you not concerned that my sister has left me alone to do all the household tasks? Tell her to help me.
That's a very familiar ring. The lord in reply said to Martha, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things. One thing only is required. Mary has chosen the better portion, and she shall not be deprived of it. This is the gospel of the lord.
And notice the use of the word shell there in English. That's the imperative, equivalent to an imperative. The name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen. This is a very delicate reading from our lord's many, many spoken words. Of course, the thing, the answer is that every Christian has to be both a Martha and a Mary.
That say that right away. It's not an either or proposition. The one thought I get one once in a while, but the thought that struck me this morning very forcibly was this. It's not that only and I I mean, don't don't underrate this thing. To be preparing to prepare a meal in Israel I said Israel.
Today, from the lake in the North down to Jerusalem in the South, the Judea. In those days, to prepare a meal, which which had to be a pretty elaborate affair, was no small task. They didn't have any electric stoves or gas stoves or, microwave ovens. They only had open fires, and imagine in in many instances, they had to go out and slaughter the lamb and bring the meat in, and it was a mess. I mean, it was a big thing.
It made our Thanksgiving dinner preparations look sick. And poor old Martha, they're sweating along, and and here's Mary sitting. Notice the verb sitting at the feet of our lord. But now notice what follows. Here's the point.
Notice what follows. It isn't that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus. It isn't that she was inactive, that she was passive in the presence of our lord. Not at all. What does the good book say?
That Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to his words. Listening to his words. And to me, they they are very significant. It's not enough to be in the company of Jesus. It's not enough to be sitting at his feet, paying giving him a lot of attention, giving him your whole attention.
What matters is, are you listening? Are you listening? Because we're Luke says very specifically that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to his words. And you can easily reconstruct that sentence that she was sit sitting at his feet in order to. In other words, the purpose of her being there was to listen to the lord.
And when all the chips are down, what makes things valuable or invaluable, what what puts a a quality upon our lives isn't that we're sitting at the feet of Jesus. It's the question whether we are listening to Jesus. Did that ever strike you? What struck me when I looked this over? I don't know how many times I've seen this.
But isn't this a a very simple truth? Here's poor Martha giving the lord everything she could give him. And you see, the problem with being busy is that the busyness can obliterate the reason that we're being busy, if you follow me. It's so easy to forget why we're doing something and to get all wrapped up in what we're doing. I often think about I think about this I you see, one of the earliest religious principles that I got, and I mean, it goes back to my earliest memories, even to the days when I tried to set a barn on fire and got my first whipping or last one.
It goes back that far. It was the morning offering. The morning offering. You don't hear anything about that anymore. I went to a Christian Brothers school, and the first thing we did in the in that classroom was to say the morning offering, which we renewed every hour.
And during the class, halfway through the class, we the class monitor rang a little bell to remind us that we were in the presence of god and that we were offering our day's work to him. Right in the middle of the class, everything stopped. He rang the bell. The teacher stopped mid sentence for every class. And I went to the Christian Brothers for almost all of my elementary school and high school.
Every day, that's the way it was. You you see, the point is that people today I think of parents, mothers and fathers. Fathers. I think of unmarried daughters and sons, all kinds of people. Remember, there are a lot of good people in this world.
Don't ever forget it. And many of the people we don't think are so good may be better than we think. There are plenty of people today making tremendous sacrifices for other people. As von Hildebrand says in a very remarkable book with a terrible title, it's a translation from the German, in defense of purity. But he brings out in that book this great truth that parents and a lot of other human beings in this world, they cannot not be kind and generous.
You take parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and sons and daughters, the sacrifices they make and have to make to be decent and face themselves in a mirror. And then von Hildebrand turns around and says, what about your religious? And he and he goes on to say that they can be the most selfish people in the world because they don't have those those compulsions. But what I'm aiming at is this, that so many of these good people making tremendous sacrifices, they lose sight of the purpose of it. Let me give you to it in a very concrete way.
Somebody asked mother Teresa how she could love these these dying people that she picked off the street. Now they were very repulsive. They looked bad. They smelled bad, and everything about them that you could see and smell and taste was bad. And Margaret said, how can you love these people?
And mother Theresa says, I don't love them. I love God. You see, this is the point we have to get into our lives. What are we living for? And dear old Martha could here she loves the Lord.
She wants to give him a good meal. She want, and of course, he had companions. And here she is on all the hubbub and the flurry of the kitchen getting the thing going and the heat and this and the fumes and everything, you know, and get it's a it's a very it's a milieu. It's a battle. And in all of this, it's so easy for Martha to forget Jesus, to forget why she's doing it.
She'll be so interested in that the lamb be just done properly that she forgets for whom she's making the lamb. It's so easy. It's so easy. A father and a mother or all these other good people, they can get so immersed in doing what they have to do that they forget why they're doing it. It's almost inevitable.
We're human. And if I'm laying bricks, I can't be thinking of the tower and the spire of the of the church. And yet I ought to be thinking of it because I'm not laying bricks. I'm building a church. So let's come back to Martha and Mary.
Notice the our lord's emphasis in Saint Luke. Our lord is saying that Mary has chosen the better part because she's sitting at his feet. Nonsense. It's because she's listening to him. Listening to his words.
Notice, does doesn't say listening to him. Plenty of people can listen to a sermon, and because they like the man who's preaching it, he's got wavy hair or something. And I'm not exaggerating. It's the way things go. Remember, Cardinal Newman says, the way to win people and persuade them is through sympathy.
You can ask any trial lawyer about that, how you win a jury. You don't win them with a syllogism. But the thing is, do we listen to Jesus' words? Words, his doctrine, his truth. And are we living for it?
When we wake up, before we put our feet on the floor, we ought to make the morning offering. It's the whole day becomes a prayer. I offer you all my work sufferings of the day, and there's going to be probably a lot of both. And the joys, we ought to remember that. Don't forget to offer joys to god, the good things, the joyful things, the happy making things.
There's a little bit of that in everybody's life every day. Maybe a little bit, but it's a little bit. And so let us take this to heart of this business to Martha and Mary, And whether you're going to be an activist or a pacifist, whether you're going to be a Carmelite in in a in a cloistered convent or you're going to be out on the battlefield, carrying down abortion meals, that's not the choice. You only have one choice, and that's Jesus Christ. We all have to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to his words.
In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.