July 21st

Post date: Jul 23, 2019 5:39:6 AM

July 21, 2019 Homily by Fr. Karl Schray

A friend of mine worked with a man who could only be described as a human buzz-saw. He once was so anxious to get into work he forgot to turn off the ignition of his car. He tried to do something productive every moment of the day.

Like so many people, he failed to recognize that to fill life with motion and light doesn’t necessarily fill it with meaning. God doesn’t want us to fill all the vacant moments of our days with activity and to fill every pause of silence with noise. God call us to rest. He wants us to rest secure in his grace. He wants us to rest physically from our labor. He wants us to rest from our worries, pressures and busyness. In fact, God calls us to be productive in our rest. How? By really resting—not worrying about things to do or places to be.

Jesus knew what it meant to rest as worship. Jesus’ teaching was built upon the principles of Sabbath rest—one day a week given to rest for our families, our workers, our animals and us. It wasn’t intended as a gift of burden, but a gift of grace. God doesn’t want our life to be a frantic dash. Meaning isn’t found in cramming every square inch of our life with activity. So often our frantic lives steal from us the very things God made us to enjoy. After all, we were made to enjoy the relationship with God, with each other, and with his creation.

Today’s story of Martha and Mary raises the question of what’s valuable in life. Clearly, hospitality is important—our First Reading emphasizes that. Abraham went out of his way to welcome and care for his three guests. But Martha’s mistake is getting hung up on all the details of hospitality. True hospitality is paying attention to the guest.

If Jesus could speak to us living in today’s hectic world, he would say to us what he said to Martha. “You are anxious and worried about many things… Mary has chosen the better part.” Jesus would remind us that we can get so involved in doing things that we can forget why we are doing them. We get so involved in making a living that we forget about making a life.

It’s this kind of mistake that Martha made in today’s Gospel. She got so involved in cooking a meal for Jesus that she forgot why Jesus came and what he really wanted. He didn’t come for a free meal; he wanted to be with friends. He came to pause and relax amid a hectic schedule of teaching and healing.

There’s a bit of Martha in all of us. We get so involved in activity that we forget to pause and rest. We forget that we need moments of silence and contemplation. We forget to sit quietly in God’s presence making sure that where we seem to be going is where we want to go.

We forget we are both body and soul and need to keep them both in balance. Let’s listen for God’s voice in the things he brings before us this week. Turn off the ignition. Pause. Be still. Rest.