Michele Dunne, OFS
In the mass readings for the July 17, the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Gn 18:1010, Col 1-24-28, Luke 10:38-42), we meet several people unusually sensitive to the presence of God. Abraham, sitting at the entrance of a tent pitched among ancient oak trees near Hebron, recognizes that the “three men” he sees standing by are special. He runs to greet them and bows down, then goes to great lengths to prepare a feast for them. While hospitality is a strong value among desert nomads, Abraham goes to remarkable— sacrificial—lengths to feed the men. Mary the sister of Martha, on the other hand, is not at all concerned about feeding people; she is so aware of the divine presence of Jesus that she sets aside all her normal hospitality duties to catch every precious word of his teaching.
Reading these accounts raises questions: am I alert enough to make way for God’s presence in my life? Am I ready to drop everything to welcome God the way Abraham and Mary did? Would I be ready to sacrifice my material goods—the best food I could provide, perhaps resources I was planning to use for myself and my family—to lavish them on strangers? Would it even occur to me that three hungry-looking strangers were, as the book of Genesis says unambiguously, “the Lord” appearing to me? I am reminded of the story of St. Francis sending a friar with the community’s meager food rations to give them to robbers who came looking for a handout—after the friar had at first turned them away.
The account of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet (while her annoyed sister sets the table and cuts the bread) is one that always gets to me, for I am a busy Martha if there ever was one. Most often, when I read this passage, I hear Jesus’ rebuke—“Martha, Martha you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing”—as being about paying too much attention to mundane concerns and too little to spiritual matters.
Reading the Mary/Martha story this time I recalled advice from a participant in a virtual course on contemplation: “Stop multi-tasking.” Perhaps if I can focus on one thing at a time, on what is happening this moment instead of ruminating about the past or planning for the future I can be more open to God’s presence. There have been too many times, including recently, when I realized that I missed an opportunity to give generously as Abraham did or to listen deeply as Mary did because I was not fully in the moment.
Might you become more aware of God’s presence and therefore more willing to respond generously? For example, might you reach out in compassion to victims of gun violence to help them heal from trauma and stop the cycle of violence? Recently I was inspired to hear about a Secular Franciscan who is a deacon and leads a group that prays with gun violence victims and their families. In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, might you advocate ways to assist women in crisis pregnancies? Once the awareness is there, possibilities to respond are endless.
There is indeed hope for the busiest and most distracted of us to turn back to God with a single, pure-hearted focus and to be ready to respond. After all, as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Colossians, “It is Christ in you, the hope for glory.”