Feast day: July 29
Sts. Martha, Mary & Lazarus
The household of Bethany where Jesus rested — Martha who served, Mary who listened, Lazarus whom He raised from the dead.
Martha appears in the Gospels as the sister of Mary and of Lazarus, living at Bethany, a village near Jerusalem, in a home that was a place of welcome and friendship for Jesus. She is, by every appearance, the mistress of that household — busy, capable, and devoted — and it is in the practical service of hospitality that she is first and most famously seen.
On one visit, while Martha bustled about serving, her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening to him. Martha, 'anxious and troubled about many things,' complained that she had been left to do all the work alone and asked Jesus to send Mary to help her. His gentle answer has been pondered ever since: that Mary had chosen 'the better part' — for the one thing truly necessary is to listen to the word of God, which all our busy service is meant to serve and not to crowd out.
Yet it would be wrong to think Martha lacked faith — for the Gospel gives her one of its greatest professions of it. When their brother Lazarus had died and Jesus came too late, as it seemed, it was the active, outspoken Martha who ran to meet him and declared, even in her grief, 'I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world' — and Jesus then raised Lazarus from the tomb.
Honored together with her brother and sister, Martha has always been loved as the patron of homemakers, cooks, servants, and all who express their love of God through the humble, necessary work of caring for others. She is the saint of the kitchen and the table, reminding the Church that hospitality offered to the stranger is hospitality offered to Christ himself.
Martha gets remembered for being busy, but she delivered one of the Gospel's greatest confessions of faith: 'You are the Christ, the Son of God.'
“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God. (Martha)”
— Sts. Martha, Mary & Lazarus
Image: Johannes Vermeer (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09721b.htm
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