by Father James Rodriguez
One of the things I love about sacred Scripture is that it is, as Hebrews 4:12 says, living and effective. As the word of God, it really is one of His favorite ways to speak to us, and the way we hear the words can change as we change and grow.
A passage that may have gone over our heads in childhood now knocks us to our knees. For me, today’s Gospel is like that. The more responsibility I’ve been given, the easier it is to excuse not praying enough, to my own detriment. The more I neglect prayer, the more I thirst for it, realizing that without it my work is meaningless.
While it is true that our faithful diligence can be a type of prayer, an offering of our time and talent consecrated to their source, I’ve learned that nothing can replace quality time at the feet of the Master. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing these columns for you, because I do so in my rectory chapel, entrusting my meager words to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Here I have come, time and again, to find that He calls me not to one extreme or the other, but to both.
Martha and Mary together represent a well-ordered life, a balance between work and prayer in which one influences and imbues the other, sometimes blurring the line entirely so that one’s life itself becomes a consecrated offering.
Abraham and Sarah make such a gift to the Lord in today’s first reading.
In last week’s article, I mentioned Old Testament typology, and here the image is clearly one of the Trinity. Abraham even addresses them in the singular, perhaps highlighting their similarities, but pointing to what would only be fully revealed later and then celebrated every Sunday after Pentecost. Their hospitality is praiseworthy, to be sure, but, like last week’s good Samaritan, it was their ability to sense God in the strangers that spurred them on.
As we continue to listen to the Letter to the Colossians, we are treated to similar insights from St. Paul. He understood that in suffering offered for the Lord, we can in some way relate to Him, and thus participate in the work of salvation, “to bring to completion for you the word of God.”
This word, handed down through the generations, took flesh in Jesus and continues to be handed down through the work of the Church in all her members. However, if we are not first nourished — our ears first, then our bodies — in fervent attendance at Mass, we quickly begin to run on fumes, like a car in desperate need of gas. Fill up at the feet of the Lord so that you can share what he entrusts to you.
Be Mary first, then Martha, so that, like their brother Lazarus, you and I might experience the new life Christ came to bring us at the table of his word and sacrament.
Father James Rodriguez is the pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in Rockaway Beach.