Martha and Mary: working for God or doing God's will?

XVI Sunday of the year Year C Lk 10:38-42

“While Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem a lady received him in her house”. We know that family from another passage of the gospel. This is the house of Lazarus and his two sisters Martha and Mary. Surely they were good friends of Jesus, at least from the way they talk to him we see that they have a friendly relationship. Usually at the time of Jesus the man was the owner of the house, he could invite people or not, he was in charge of staying with the guest talk to him while the women were in charge to prepare water to wash and food and drink. Here we have Martha who seems to be very strong, active and good, she is the one who invites Jesus and then she goes to work and no doubt she was preparing the best possible food for a good friend like Jesus. So she is right in asking that Mary should be there to work with her in the kitchen and let Lazarus do the job of staying with Jesus.

I think we all sometimes have sympatized for Martha, because so many times we work hard but we see that people around us are not cooperating, are not responding to what we do. Sometimes even God may seem to be deaf to our prayer and not give a hand in what we are doing.

So Martha scolds Jesus: “Don’t you care that my sister left me alone? Tell her to come and help me”.

Jesus doesn't seem to agree with her point of view. Why?

They were good friends, but their friendship on what is it based? Martha does everything, the best, but she is the one who decides, who does etc. All the others are just left there to wait. It seems that she wants to buy the friendship of Jesus through her work, she wants to have the right on it because of what she does. Maybe she even forgot to ask Jesus what he would have liked to eat.

Mary, instead, has the opposite attitude. She loves Jesus and for her the most important thing is to be with him, to listen to him. She is not claiming any right on Jesus, just feels satisfied in being there with him.

The capacity to dialogue is what makes up a real friendship. In a dialogue the most important part is the listening. The moment you talk you invade the space of the other, the moment you listen you make space in your heart for the other. That is why Jesus tells to Martha that Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken away from her.

How is our friendship with Jesus? No doubt that we work well, we do a lot of good, no doubt that we pray and when we pray we say a lot of prayers, words. But are we listening to Jesus, are we sure that the good we are doing is really what he wants us to do?

Every Sunday we come to the church, we hear the word of God and a good sermon, then we go back home and continue to do what we have always done as if the word we have heard didn’t make any change in us, as if what God said to us is not important, as if the important part in our being Christians is what we do. Are we sure that this is the right attitude? today’s gospel doesn’t seem to agree with our life style.

Once St. Peter said to Jesus: “Master, where shall we go? You only have words of eternal life”. We will go to heaven if we learn to listen to Jesus rather than fall in the temptation of doing and doing. God talks to us continuously, in all things that happen. If we learn how to recognize the will of God in the different moments of life we will be surprised how different his will is compared to what we thought.