Everything has its own season

Most people have probably worked hard, while someone else is slacking. Frustration and anger well up. Perhaps even an entreaty to an authority figure to right the wrong.

When that happens, most of us wouldn't expect to come out on the wrong side. Certainly, Martha didn't expect it when she asked Jesus to tell her sister, Mary, to help with the guests, rather than sit listening to him. Imagine her surprise, then, when Jesus said, "Martha, Martha, you are fretting about so many things; but one thing is necessary. It is Mary who has chosen the better part" (Lk 10:38-42). Both of them were practicing hospitality, but in different ways.

Over the centuries, spiritual writers often interpreted this passage as proof that Jesus is saying that the contemplative Christian life -- such as the one cloistered monks and nuns lead -- is superior to the active Christian life of everyone else.

But a more accurate reading of Jesus' intentions is found in the Book of Ecclesiastes "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heavens" (3:1).

In others words, Jesus is saying, "Martha, it is good that you are bringing us food and drink, making sure we're comfortable, cleaning up the messes, but right now you need to sit and listen. When we're through, there will be plenty of time to clean up and Mary will help you. But that is then. This is now."

That lesson applies to our own lives. Eating ice cream is good, but not during Sunday Mass. By the same token, a priest would be wrong to walk into an ice cream parlor and start celebrating Mass. That was Jesus' point.

We also know that Martha, Mary and their brother, Lazarus, were close friends of Jesus. Their house was a place he could go without being grilled for dining with sinners or for being challenged about what he was teaching and doing.

When Jesus came to see them after Lazarus died, Martha went out to greet him, rather than Mary (Jn 11:1-44). On meeting him, she says she knows he could bring Lazarus back to life. Jesus quizzes her more, and asks if she believes that he is the resurrection and the life. "Yes," she says, "I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who was to come into the world."

Martha also was present when her sister, Mary, anointed Jesus' feet with costly perfume and dried them with her hair, earning the reprimand of Judas and the praise of Jesus (Jn 12:1-8).

Martha is not mentioned in Scripture again, though she could have been among the women who witnessed Jesus' death. A medieval legend says that she, Mary and Lazarus went to France after the resurrection and evangelized.

Martha is the patron of cooks, dieticians, innkeepers and servants. Her symbols are a holy water sprinkler and a dragon.

Her feast day is July 29.