Sunday the 20th of July 2025 - The Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Genesis 18:1-10a/ Ps 15(14)/ Colossians 1:24-28/ Luke 10:38-42

When we host dinner parties at home or even simple family gatherings it can be a balancing act between being sociable to guests while having to prepare elaborate meals. Either we sit and chat with family and friends until we hear the inevitable pot boiling over in the kitchen, or we busy ourselves in the kitchen missing the chance to chat and catch up with all the family news. We find Martha and Mary in this situation in the gospel passage today. We know that they are friends of Jesus who probably visited them on several occasions. Martha busied herself with all the duties a good host would be expected to perform while her sister, Mary, sat and listened to Jesus. Martha became understandably frustrated and must have been even more disconcerted when Jesus told her that Mary had chosen the better way while she had become anxious and troubled by all her duties. All the effort Martha was putting in was, in her mind, for the benefit of her honoured guest. For his part, Jesus did not seem concerned with the details of his visit only the importance of meeting and talking with his friends.

We, like Martha, can become distracted by the many worries of our lives and miss the opportunity to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to him in a quiet, calm atmosphere. Yes, there are many things we need to do in our busy lives, but it is vital that we prioritise these with the one thing that is more important than all our daily anxieties and concerns. Our only purpose in this life is to find the way into our true and everlasting life in Jesus. He is the way to our heavenly life and only by sitting at his feet and listening to him can we find our way. No amount of fussing and fretting about relatively unimportant earthly worries will move us one step closer to heaven. Listening to and acting on what Jesus calls us to do is the one thing that is necessary, all else is secondary to that and all that we do should stem from and be because of what Jesus is calling us to. It is about setting the correct priorities in our lives, listening carefully to God before throwing ourselves into our tasks. All the time and effort we put into our lives could be meaningless if it is not done to advance the will of God in building up his kingdom. We can only serve others with the attentiveness of Martha if we have first sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to and talking to God as Mary did. The two styles of life go together with Mary’s contemplation leading into Martha’s work for God and others. One without the other is meaningless.

A great example of solving the Martha and Mary dilemma can be found in the life of St. Teresa of Kolkata. Mother Teresa and her nuns ministered to the very poor and at times were overwhelmed by their work. Mother Teresa insisted that they prayed in front of the Blessed Sacrament, sitting at the feet of Jesus as Mary did, each day before starting their work. Challenged about the time they were taking in prayer when they could use the time in serving the poor, Mother Teresa responded that it was not the case that they did not have time to pray but they did not have the time not to pray saying, ‘if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy’. All her work was centred on and emanated from prayer.

We can feel too busy to pray at times, but it is then that we need prayer more than ever. St. Francis de Sales is credited as saying, “Every one of us needs half an hour of prayer a day, except when we are busy — then we need an hour.” This all seems counterintuitive, how can we need to spend more time in prayer when we do not even have the time to complete the tasks we already have? We can feel overwhelmed with what seem to be very important tasks and as with Martha we become irritated and frustrated, flitting from task to task without ever completing anything and eventually becoming ineffective and possibly breaking down completely. When we start to feel overwhelmed, we need to move away from Martha’s feverish bustle and follow Mary to the feet of Jesus. Quiet prayer, especially in times of pressure, will help us to prioritise our lives to put the correct amount of effort into those areas that are of most importance in respect of what the Lord requires us to do. Through prayer, talking to and listening to God, we can discern what is truly important and what work needs to be done and when.

The secular world calls this thoughtful contemplation and priority of life, ‘mindfulness’. It is the practice of considering the moment, focusing on thoughts and feelings, cultivating awareness and acceptance of situations. It helps manage stress, improve focus, and improve well-being. These are all skills that have needed to be relearnt for the modern day after faith in God with the attendant benefits of prayer have been lost by so many. We Christians have been practicing this through prayer, sitting at the feet of Jesus, for two thousand years and the benefits still hold good today. To spend some quiet time, at home, on a walk, with the family, in church, at mass or Eucharistic Adoration, just in the presence of God, listening and talking with the Lord, is a luxury but unlike many luxuries it is free and available to us whenever we want or need it. It is by sitting at the feet of Jesus, like Mary in the gospel today, that we find real mindfulness, an understanding of our relationship with God, ourselves, and others, where we find our purpose in life and the reason behind what God is calling us to do, our vocation in this life. It is through this awareness of God and self that all the effort we put in to doing things becomes purposeful. Action without purpose is meaningless. All our Martha like dedication and work, is given purpose when done with the quiet listening of Mary. We need to learn and practice both the contemplation of Mary and the dedicated action of Martha to become effective disciples of Jesus.

God Bless Brendan.