Who in your life is a stranger? The baby in the womb that has been judged unwanted? The person with a different political position or opinion? The immigrant next door who plays his music loud? Do you know that there’re blessings associated with tolerating or appreciating them, welcoming and treating them as fellow humans like yourself? The Psalmist declares, “Indeed, you shall receive blessings from the Lord and reward from the God who saves you” (Psalm 15). The blessings of Sarah, Abraham, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus shall be yours.
When you listen to the scripture passages of this Sunday, the theme of hospitality clearly jumps out. In the first reading, Sarah and Abraham welcome three strangers who turned out to be angels of God. The gospel recounts how Martha and her sister Mary welcomed the Lord to their home. The Responsorial Psalm sings of true righteousness as consisting of generosity, justice, and goodwill toward others. And the second reading from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians teaches us to follow Christ through bearing others’ sufferings, especially the foreigners, the gentiles, the weak, and the afflicted. While many would love to wall off the stranger, we learn from the Lord that welcoming the stranger always brings a blessing. They don’t have to look like us, speak our language, practice our faith or have our cultural values before we welcome them. We would be foolish, though, to care-freely throw our doors open; yet, that does not excuse us from hospitality. We cannot hide under security and self-preservation to live as though charity to the stranger is something odd.
We must not only welcome the stranger but do so in love, with generosity and boldness, like Martha and Mary. These two women were clearly in love with Jesus, and He treated their crushes with respect and affection. I bet dirty minds gossiped about Jesus’ relationship with them, but Jesus didn’t mind. Crucial to the mystery of the incarnation is the expectation that Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, had to be found in a family context, in domestic scenes, with people he loved and who loved him. The parents of the girls were presumably deceased, leaving only their brother Lazarus to fend for all. At this visit, it was clear that Lazarus was not home; he worked so hard that he fell sick and died, prompting the Lord to come back and miraculously raise him up.
In Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha, this message is given: that Jesus indeed had friends, and visited them. But the manner of hospitality for the two women differed. Without over-analyzing the perspectives, we easily notice that for Martha, service comes first, while for Mary, relationship is first. Who is right? Both are right? If the question, however, is: “which is better?” Jesus answers: “Mary has chosen the better part.” Martha’s kind of service is always admirable if it doesn’t become self-gratifying and an excuse to neglect availability to others, or to bend the knee in prayer. When my excuse for missing Mass on a Sunday is because I was helping with the pancake-breakfast, attending to my lapsed-Catholic son visiting from out of town or working hard to feed my family, I may be Martha. Service devoid of prayer is self-indulgent. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle warns that “the vice of doing too much is the enemy of spirituality.”
We are not to choose between a Martha and a Mary. True friends and disciples of the Lord are both Martha and Mary at the same time. Similarly, in our relationship with our children, our friends and spouse, we must balance the Mary and Martha in us. Don’t work so hard to provide for your family that you do not have time to sit down, relax, play and pray with them. In a bid to put food on the table some have become total strangers to their family and God. Service and prayer must go hand in hand. Prayer makes service humble and gratuitous. Service without prayer soon becomes prideful and self-serving.
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo