Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time C

Entrance Antiphon Ps 54 (53): 6, 8 See, I have God for my help. The Lord sustains my soul. I will sacrifice to you with willing heart, and praise your name, O Lord, for it is good.

Collect Show favour O Lord, to your servants and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace, that, made fervent in hope, faith and charity, they may be ever watchful in keeping your commands. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Genesis 18:1-10; Psalm 14; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)

For Jesus If one wishes to attain a personal knowledge of the Lord, a most effective help is to place oneself in a Gospel scene with Jesus, and to be with him as he speaks and acts in that scene. From within that Gospel scene he will reveal himself to the soul, just as he revealed himself to the soul of Martha’s sister Mary in today’s Gospel. Let each resolve to do what our Lord holds up for our observance in our Gospel scene today. Consider Jesus (Luke 10:38-42) as he speaks to the one who sits at his feet and listens to him. In our own hearts, let us gaze at Jesus speaking. He is God, the source of truth and light, the supreme teacher of every person. He is God, the guide of all humanity, the source of all light and goodness. He is the Incarnate Beauty of God. If one enters into a serious relationship with him in prayer and in faithful living, the beauty of Christ’s heart and soul will become manifest, and will take possession of one’s heart. St Augustine addressed God as ‘O Beauty, ancient and ever new.’ Jesus is this Beauty, and he is the Light of the world. But he will not be known by the outsider. On one occasion he said, Come to me, all you who labour, and learn from me. We must, then, come to him in order to learn. He will be found by the person who, like Mary in this Gospel scene, resolves to give to Jesus the full attention of his heart as a disciple. But this simple Gospel scene not only tells us about Jesus. It also reveals the vocation of the Christian. In the figure of Mary listening with wrapt attention to the words of the Lord, we have a figure of the total love that the true disciple is called to have for Jesus. The love that the Scriptures command that we have for God himself, a total love of mind, heart and soul, is to be directed to Jesus himself. This love is to permeate everything we do in life, our daily prayer, work, sufferings. He is what our hearts are made for. We show this love for him by listening to his teaching and putting it faithfully into practice in our daily life.

By contrast, Martha is distracted and worried with many things. It is a particular moment in her life and is in no way a judgment on her life in general, for Martha is a saint whose feast we celebrate every year on July 29. But that Gospel scene is meant by the inspired author, and hence by the Holy Spirit, to teach us something very important in the Christian life. Our Lord said to Martha that she was not to be fretting about so many things. Only one was necessary, and that is to have Jesus as the object of our heart’s desire, to hear the word of God as it comes from Jesus, to hear it with love for him and in recognition that he is God, and then to put it into practice in our daily life. In our daily life we must abide in the person, the word and the love of Jesus Christ. There are so many things that fill up the lives of people, about which they worry and fret, apart from the presence of Jesus. Jesus is thus reduced to being but one of these things. The true friends of Jesus who abide in his love will have worries, but the one thing necessary, their love for Jesus, will be the great anchor of their life. He is the joy of every man and woman. He is what our hearts are made for. So what must we do? We must, as it were, sit at the feet of Jesus, learn to gaze at him in faith with all our heart, listen to him speaking to us, and out of love for him put his word into practice in our daily life. It is possible for a Christian to go right through life living in the way Martha was at that moment, worried and fretting about so many things, and never gaining possession of that necessary thing, which is Jesus and his word coming to us in the Scriptures and in the teaching and sacraments of the Church. It is possible to be always doing what Martha did at that point, and never doing what Mary was doing then. We must put time into serious prayer with Jesus, especially the Eucharistic Jesus, into spiritual reading, into the overcoming of vices and growing in the virtues of Christ, into regular Confession, into a serious spiritual life.

While we ought be like Martha in assiduously serving our Lord in our neighbour, in everything we ought have him as the one thing necessary in our life. He is the supreme object of our hearts. For the Catholic, this especially means making the Eucharist Jesus the summit and source of our daily life. Let us build up a strong daily life of prayer, and a life of service of others for love of Jesus Christ. We must bring an undivided love for, and obedience to, Jesus into our life, into our prayer, our work, our all. This is symbolized by the figure of Mary in our Gospel scene.

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (Luke 10:38-42)

Prayer In the moment encapsulated by our Gospel scene today, Mary gives her whole attention to our Lord, while Martha, who loved our Lord, frets and worries over many things. Our Lord’s words to Martha (Luke 10:38-42) show that he wants the attention of our heart. He wants our love. He wants our lives to be founded on love for him and attention to his word. Love for Jesus is the basis of the life of the Christian, and in God’s plan all are called to this love for Jesus. The catechism asks, why did God make us? God made us to know, love and serve Him here on earth and as a result of this to see and enjoy Him for ever in heaven. The order of that statement of life is significant: We must know Him, love Him, and then on that basis, serve Him. But if we are to know and love Him we must think of Him and spend time with Him. At the core of our daily lives, our hearts have to be finding their centre, their peace and their happiness in Him. ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened,’ he said elsewhere, ‘and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.’ All is founded on a personal love for Jesus, and this depends on personal prayer. We must decide to be with Jesus, which is to say to spend time with Him. In any personal friendship, nothing will develop if we do not spend time with the person whose friend we wish to be. As a plan of life, regular time, indeed prime time, must be spent in thought and prayer in the presence of Jesus Christ.

We ought begin every day prayerfully by recalling God’s special love for us and by offering the day to Him. The morning offering of ourselves to God is fundamental for growth in God’s love, an offering we ought renew numerous times each day by means of short prayers to Jesus who is always within. We ought pray repeatedly to our Lady, St Joseph , our Guardian Angel, and other saints to whom we are drawn. Apart from these brief prayers that are so important, there are two great elements of piety which are necessary to develop a personal relationship with our Lord. They are spiritual reading and daily meditation, and these two things are best done each day. The spiritual reading would include a gradual reading of the Scriptures, especially the New Testament. Perhaps something else from some other spiritual book could be included in the moments of spiritual reading immediately after the Scriptures, such as a life of a saint. Then apart from spiritual reading, I would urge some prayerful meditation in the presence of God during the day, say about ten minutes straight. Meditation is prayer, the prayer that comes from a prayerful consideration of, say, a Gospel scene which could be the Gospel of the liturgical day. Turn to the Gospel scene. Read it slowly and in the presence of Christ. Visualize the scene of the Gospel as if present, and put yourself in the company of Jesus in that Gospel scene. Just be with him for those minutes. Listen to him, and present your heart to him with all its desires, its needs, its difficulties. Give to Him those ten or fifteen minutes each day. You can then take the experience of Jesus in that scene into the day’s work, and return briefly to it often. Spiritual reading and the prayer of meditation each day — let us say, ten or fifteen minutes of each — is the key to spiritual growth. Far more is involved, but with this, the foundation will be there.

A further help may be to commit yourself, as well, to an hour of prayer each week perhaps in your Church before the Tabernacle, all the while making your day’s work the expression of your love for Jesus whom you are coming to know more and more in prayer. If you follow these practices faithfully, things will happen. You will discover the presence of Jesus in your life. You will come to know his love for you and you will come to love him in return.

(E.J.Tyler)

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