Scripture Reflection for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Genesis 18:1-10
Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 5
Colossians 1:24-28
Luke 10:38-42
“You are anxious and worried about many things.”
How many of us can relate to that? How worried and anxious are we? Count the ways. Our worries can range from balancing the checkbook, to dreading the morning headlines, to gazing at the skies for signs of storms, to googling science websites for details about moles and rashes.
And so this Sunday, in the middle of that kind of frenzy – a frenzy that certainly had its own variations in first century Palestine – we hear Jesus say to Martha those relatable words: “You are anxious and worried about many things.”
What can we do about it? The Gospel this Sunday gives us a clue. To understand the story of Martha and Mary, it helps to put it in context. Last weekend, St. Luke gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan and a lesson in caring for our neighbor, wherever we may find him. Having taught that lesson, Jesus next goes to visit Martha and Mary.
To the busiest of the two, Martha, Jesus says: “There is need of only one thing.” He doesn’t explain what that is. He doesn’t have to.
He has already told us, in the story of The Good Samaritan: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your being, with all your strength and with all your mind. And your neighbor as yourself.”
This Sunday, we see that in the flesh. Mary is fulfilling the first half of that: loving her Lord with all her heart. And Martha, in her own frenzied but well-meaning way fulfilling the second part: loving – and serving – her neighbor.
The challenge to us today is to combine those, to bring them together, the same way that Mary and Martha are brought together to share the same house and live under one roof. But how?
How do we find the time to love the Lord and love our neighbor and get done what we need to do?
About 400 years ago, in France, there was a young man by the name of Nicholas Herman who had spent much of his youth as a soldier and eventually decided to enter a Carmelite monastery. He took the name “Brother Lawrence.”
He was assigned to kitchen duty and he hated it; but it was in the kitchen, amid all the noise and frenzy, he found a way to God. He later wrote down his thoughts in letters that were collected in a little book, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” that has become a spiritual classic.
Brother Lawrence wrote that even in the noise of the kitchen, he possessed God as if he were praying before the Blessed Sacrament. He wrote: “It is not necessary for being with God to be always at Church. We may make an oratory of our heart, wherein to retire from time to time, to converse with him in meekness, humility and love.”
His secret was simple: he spent every moment reminding himself of the nearness of God. Understanding that, Brother Lawrence made even mundane kitchen work a prayer.
It’s the kind of prayer that Jesus was calling on Martha to pray. All these centuries later, he calls on all of us to live and pray that way – to discover in the long work week and the carpools and the chores and the umpteen unfinished projects of daily life something sacred.
We need to remember that God is present in all of it. We need to be grateful for that, and to celebrate that, and to never take it for granted.
As Brother Lawrence put it, it is all about striving to practice the presence of God – in effect, adoring him like Mary, serving him like Martha, welcoming the Lord into our lives and, prayerfully and joyfully, taking him into the world.
If we do that, it may bring us one step closer to living the message of today’s Gospel.
Too often, we may all seem as busy and as anxious as Martha.
But we can also bear witness – listen and love – like Mary. Doing that can make every moment one in which we practice the presence of God.
