HOSPITALITY AND PRAYER
Action or contemplation? Service or worship? Hospitality or prayer? For as long as Christianity has existed, we’ve debated these dichotomies. Which is more important – kneeling at the altar, or mopping the church floors? What should we prioritize? How should we find a good balance between the mystical and the practical?
The Christian life and spirituality are all about creating a balance between being with the Lord in contemplation and prayer and doing or rendering humble and generous services to our brothers and sisters known and unknown to us.
OUR THEME
The central themes of today’s readings are the importance of hospitality in Christian life and the necessity of listening to God before acting. The key to the Christian life is setting priorities: Jesus Christ first, then everything else. The only way really to learn that lesson is to spend some time every day, “sitting at the feet of Jesus.”
I love the biblical setting of the gospel of today. Jesus in the context of meal in the family of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. It is a flexing mood, maybe one of relaxing with trusted friends after a hard day’s job. As usual, he used the moment to drive great teaching on the active and contemplative Christian life. Lk. 10:38-42
The readings of this Sunday remind us of the need to be hospitable as individuals and as a church to those who come to us or we meet in the course of our work. They also invite us to a deeper life of prayer and contemplation at Jesus’ feet, the solid rock of all pastoral activities.
Above all, the readings challenge us to take the risky part of hospitality to the strangers, unknown and much-needed people who cross our path daily in life. They admonish us not to take to worries and distraction but to always allow Christ to be the host and the guest to us even in our homes.
FIRST READING: GENESIS. 18:1-10
Today’s first reading describes how Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality to angels in the guise of strangers was rewarded by God, who blessed them with a son in their old age.
Indeed, Abraham welcome unknown guests who turn to be angels of God and had the reward of a blessing: a son from God. Hospitality is key to Christian living and spirituality.
The Christian faith implies sensitivity to the plight of others especially those in need who may be stranded. It also calls us to risk-taking to be generous to those we don’t know. Yet by welcoming the strangers, like Abraham, we might be in the presence of God.
Christian hospitality is not without recompense of blessing, providence and protection amidst risk-taking. It is a profound encounter with God through our needy brothers and sisters. It is actual prayer, a moment of being with God.
SECOND READING: COLOSSIANS1:24-28
In the second reading, Paul declares that he was commissioned by God to minister to the Church, as the revealer of the mystery of salvation and the preacher of the word in its fullness. He invites believers to open their hearts and minds and to show their hospitality to the mystery of Christ which he preaches. Paul also challenges us to cultivate that quality of hospitality which welcomes all others in Christ.
For St. Paul, then, a perfect Christian life in Christ is a life full of the riches of God´s grace, mercy and glory. This centrality of Christ is our hope, endurance, and courage to face all odds and still be generous towards God and our brothers and sisters.
Vividly, St. Paul appraised the hospitality of God’s family membership extended to the gentiles through his suffering and labour. He also praised the depths of Gods of divine revelation of mysteries hidden for ages to all through wisdom and reflection (contemplative living in God).
To be able to reach in preaching to others as Paul practically did, we need to have the mystical experience of being with Christ as he often did as well. No one can serve God better than he or she who is rooted firming in Christ through prayer and listening to his words.
GOSPEL: LUKE 10:38-42
The Gospel presents Martha as a dynamo of action. As soon as Jesus and his disciples came into the house, Martha launches into the practical work of hospitality — cleaning, organizing, cooking, and serving.
While Mary is a good listener to the word of God. She sat at Jesus’s feet, taking in every word he says, and paying no attention to her harried sister.
Therefore, today’s Gospel invites us to serve others with Martha’s diligence after recharging our spiritual batteries every day by prayer – listening to God and talking to God – as Mary did.
This is such a brief and seemingly simple Gospel story, and yet it raises so many essential points. Here the theme of hospitality to others generously in Christ Jesus was emphasized. However, besides the theme of Christian hospitality that defies all risk and excuses of not helping strangers.
There is the theme of balance spirituality which has active participation in the Christian life and community and a contemplative life on Christian mysteries of faith at the foot and presence of Jesus.
STATUS OF WOMEN IN DISCIPLESHIP
It is obvious we might focus much on the themes of hospitality and prayers. Yet, there are some other themes of the gospel passage. Like Jesus changing or radicalizing the status quo of discipleship.
Jesus elevated the status of women by affirming Mary’s right to discipleship. (Traditionally, only male disciples sat at their Teacher’s feet to study the Torah). This gender reversal is a huge deal because Jesus` ministry championed women in a thousand essential ways during his time on earth.
Mary, a female student sitting at his feet was one of the most radical moves of Jesus. He stands the risk of being discredited and despised by the traditional men and patriarchal systems or structures of his time.
This is crucial for us contemporary Christians and Church. This week, Pope Francis on Wednesday appointed women for the first time to the office that advises him in the choice of bishops across the globe. A move that bolsters efforts to give women a larger voice in the church’s operations. We, as the church of Christ, must embrace inclusivity of all in Christ without gender, racial, sexual, cultural or systemic discrimination.
JESUS AND MARTHA
Yes, it could be argued that Jesus’ presence breaks down cultural biases and barriers and he championed women`s liberation in so many ways during his time on earth. But the fact remains that in this particular story, Martha’s burdensome sense of obligation and duty had cultural roots which Jesus didn’t confront on her behalf.
Her anxiety didn’t come from anywhere; she lived inside a social and religious system that fully expected her to behave as she did, and the power of that system was formidable. In other words, Martha needed systemic change to live into the permission Jesus wanted to offer her. She couldn’t embrace such radical freedom by herself — she needed the folks with the power to embrace it with her and for her.
What would it be like for us contemporary Christians to examine the systems and structures that still bind people like Martha today? What would it cost us to dismantle those systems? What would it look like to create concrete opportunities for today’s “Marthas” to rest?
To sit freely at Jesus’s feet? To find support, community, and help as they struggle to become disciples? What would it look like to stand in solidarity with your nearest Martha as she unlearns a lifetime’s worth of messaging about what makes her soul lovable, valuable, honourable, and holy?
IMBALANCE SPIRITUALITY
Does Jesus want us to live an imbalanced life? This is the fundamental question we ask ourselves today. Yet, we live in the real world and know that for all practical purposes, it’s ridiculous to champion contemplation over action. The word over the deed. The mystic over the activist. Why? Because we need both.
Our common life requires both. How would the Church survive without Martha? Martha bakes the Eucharistic bread. Martha tends the grounds. Martha arranges the flowers, restocks the votive candles, sews the pageant costumes, and dusts the pews.
The truth is, we tried and tried to read Mary and Martha’s story as a story about balance. And we miss the most essential lesson, Jesus’s ringing endorsement of Mary’s “choosing the better part” makes this story one that is not about balance.
This story is about choosing the one thing, the best thing — and forsaking everything else for its sake. The story is about single-mindedness. About a passionate and undistracted pursuit of a single, mind-blowing treasure.
Think of Jesus’s most evocative parables; they all point in this same direction. The pearl of great price. The buried treasure in the field. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. Christianity, it seems, is not about balance; it’s about extravagance. It’s not about being reasonable; it’s about being wildly, madly, and deeply in love with Jesus.
JESUS ‘RADICAL CHANGE IN US
The story of Jesus’ encounter with the two sisters: Mary and Mary provokes us with a radical change of mentality or conversion when we let Christ into our lives. Hence, as soon as Jesus entered Martha’s house, he turned the place upside down. He messed with Martha’s expectations, routines, and habits. He insisted on costly change.
Perhaps Martha’s mistake was that she assumed she could invite Jesus into her life – and still carry on with that life, as usual, maintaining control, privileging her priorities, and clinging to her much-beloved agendas and schedules.
What was Jesus’s response to that assumption? No. Not. That’s not how discipleship works. Jesus’s presence in us required a radical, countercultural and paradigm shift. Which is to say, a wholehearted surrender.
Every action, every decision, every priority, and every life choice, would have to be filtered through this new love, this new devotion, this new passion. Why? Because Jesus was no ordinary guest. He was the Guest who would be the Host. Mary knew and recognized this, no wonder she chose to be that disciple that surrender freely and wholeheartedly to Christ.
The Host would provide the bread of life, the living water, and the wine that was his blood, to anyone who would sit at his feet and receive his hospitality.
THE SPIRITUALITY OF DOING OR SAYING WITHOUT BEING WITH THE LORD
It’s easy to lose sight of Mary. In our work-frenzied, performance-driven lives, it’s easy to believe that pondering, listening, waiting, and resting has no value.
In our age of snark and cynicism, it’s easy to roll our eyes at spiritual earnestness. In a world that is profoundly broken, it’s easy to argue that we should leave contemplation to the monastics, and throw all of our time and energy into social engagement.
The root meaning of the word “worry” is “strangle” or “seize by the throat and tear.” The root meaning of the word “distraction” is “a separation or a dragging a part of something that should be whole.” These are violent words. Words that wound and fracture. States of mind that render us incoherent, divided, and un-whole
OUR EMPTINESS AND BROKENNESS
Sometimes our spiritual emptiness or human brokenness manifests themselves in: 1 Our engaging in so many activities to run away from our troubles or ourselves. 2. Some other times, it is seen due to our inability to stay in the presence of Christ in prayer and contemplation.
Jesus found Martha in just such a state of fragmentation — a condition in which she could not enjoy his company, savour his presence, find inspiration in her work, receive anything he wished to offer her, or show him, genuine love.
Instead, all she could do was question his love (“Lord, do you not care?”), fixate on herself (“My sister has left me to do all the work by myself”) and triangulate (“Tell her then to help me.”)
FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
1. Does any of this sound familiar? Is your service or your hospitality rooted in an anxious perfectionism that strangles you?
2. Is your inner life so fragmented, so incoherent, that you struggle to give and receive love?
3. Are you quick to seethe? Has your busyness become an affront to the people you wish to host?
4. Is your worry keeping you from being present, engaged, and fully alive? Have you lost the ability to attend? To linger? To delve deep into the relationship Jesus longs to have with you?
5. Are you using your packed schedule to avoid intimacy with God or with others? Is your life spiritually empty for lack of time and space to be with Christ?
The truth is that Jesus’s words to Martha – were not a criticism – but an invitation. Not as a rebuke, but as a soothing balm. Jesus knows that we ache to be whole. Jesus knows that we place devastating expectations on ourselves.
Jesus knows that our resentments, like Martha’s, are often borne of fear and envy. Martha longed to sit where Mary sat. She longed to take delight in Jesus’s words. She longed to surrender her heavy burden and allow Jesus to host her. Maybe we long for these beautiful things, too.
The good news: there is a need for only one thing, and if we choose it, no one will ever have the power to take it away. So let’s choose it. Let’s learn hospitality grounded in love, not fear. Let’s begin where God’s Spirit invites us to begin. At the feet of the One who comes to serve. In the presence of the One who values our rest. Jesus our Host is waiting.
OUR PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, a perfect Christian life is one of generosity to spend quality time with God and serving one´s brethren in humble service. Help us be generous and alert to always listen to your word.
Jesus, the invitation to us today is to be Martha and Maria in our Christian living, creating a balance amidst the bustling and hustling of our daily life to be more of Maria in contemplation and less of Martha in action.
Help us to cherish the spirit of meditation that auto-transformation of our person from less cares and worries to a loving and confident person in listening to your word. Equally, in the Spirit of hospitality may we be open to all we meet in life especially, the strangers. ¡Amen!
