It's 27th November 2008. Last week, we marked the end of the Catholic liturgical year with the feast of Christ the King. This weekend marks the 1st Sunday in Advent and the start of a new year in the Church's calendar.
Already, the shopping complexes are busy decorating their malls. People are already talking about making "Christmas plans" and "Christmas shopping". The first sounds of Christmas tunes begin to play in the air.
All the more then, that the story reproduced below may well be worth reading and reflecting upon, during one of the most hectic periods in our lives:
by Rev. Henry Ticknor
(note: edited for space).
For most of the people I know, rather than being a time of quiet expectation, the four weeks of advent are filled to the brim with the rush of seasonal activities. There is shopping to be done, the cooking of favorite and traditional foods, decorating the house, the yard, and making the usual round of pre-Christmas parties and social gatherings. This headlong rush lasts through New Years and then there is a collective crash as we hunker down for the dark days of winter.
This season of advent, leading up to Christmas is a time of paradoxical feelings and contrasting emotions. We are excited about the holidays, but all that we are expected to do wears us down. We can feel very sentimental about family traditions; and at the same time we may resent the time and effort required to meet other people’s expectations. Seeing family and friends can be exhilarating; and yet we can also feel pangs of loneliness and despair. The media bombards us with the message that this is a time of love, hope and joy. But the love and joy that the season represents can also be mingled with worry about money, jobs, children and our relationships. Hope can be dashed by the current events. In the end, all the hustle and bustle of this season can leave us emotionally and physically drained.
you won’t find it in any collection of contemporary seasonal writing. In fact, I doubt very much that it appears in any discussion of the Advent season at all and I may be the only person who really thinks this story has anything at all to do with Advent. It comes from the Gospel of Luke and the beginning words may have a familiar ring:“ Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard his word.
But Martha was combuered about much serving, and came to him and said, “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.
And Jesus answered and said unto her, ‘Martha, Martha, thou art careful and worried about many things: But one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.
At this time of year, this season of Advent, I am always reminded of this story of two sisters, of Mary and Martha and I am sure that many of us can relate our own life experience to this story.
Martha is the perfect host. I can imagine her now in her kitchen stirring a pot with a big wooden spoon, her hands and face white from the flour used to bake bread. I can see her moving quickly from pot to pot—the potatoes are boiling over, the meat dish is overdone in the oven, the table still needs to be set and to make matters worse, Mary has invited guests for dinner. So when Martha walks out into the front room looking for some help and support from her sister what is Mary doing? Well, to Martha’s mind she isn’t doing much. Mary is sitting on the floor engaged in conversation with the guests.
I like to think that they are catching up on important events in their lives, sharing stories, possibly even some local gossip. In short, they are talking about the essential matters in life. Issues dealing with faith, hope and love.
Now, I can picture the situation coming to a head as Martha goes barging into the front room wondering why in the world her sister isn’t helping her in the kitchen. But what is interesting here, is that Martha does not direct her remarks to Martha but to Jesus. interesting in this story is that Martha does not direct her anger at Mary, but rather she scolds Jesus. “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.” By her words She implies that all this extra work she must do is somehow his fault and in a way she tells him off by saying, “Don’t you care that I am stuck in the kitchen doing everything by myself? Tell Mary to help.”
Now Jesus has apparently attended self-esteem workshops and is well versed in issues around manipulation and triangulation and he quickly realizes that Martha is trying to get him to take sides. And how does he reply?
Martha, Martha, you are too busy with all your cooking and all your preparations—you have too many things on your plate(!)—but Mary has chosen to sit and talk with me. Long after the meal is over, she will carry the memories of this time we spent together. And this is the end of the story. We don’t know whether Martha suddenly realized that Jesus was right, took off her apron and entered into the conversation; or whether she took on a major martyr attitude and slunk back into the kitchen being resentful and feeling sorry for herself.
What an instructive story this is for the weeks leading up to Christmas. How many of us are like Martha—running around trying to decorate the house, wrapping presents in just the perfect gift wrap, writing cards with a personal note in each, and cooking everyone’s favorite foods?
How quickly do we become angry or jealous of those who seem to have found the time to relax, to visit, to talk with one another about their shared hopes, shared dreams and shared visions for what this troubled world might be. How many of us become resentful and feel like we are “stuck” doing all the things no one else will do?
My Christmas wish for this year is that we would all try to behave more like Mary and a little less like Martha. How I wish we could spend more time listening to each other, really listening and hearing the stories of joy, of pain and of discouragement. All too soon even the most elegant meal is leftovers; the beautiful wrapping paper is in the re-cycling. But the time we spend with friends and loved ones—our families and our friends—this time is precious. This is the good portion that can not be taken away.
And in a very real sense this congregation is in a season of waiting, of expectancy, of preparation. We are waiting for the new building that may yet take several months to complete. We are waiting for our future story to begin and to unfold. And just as the advent season is a time of personal reflection over the next several weeks I invite each person here to reflect upon what this church and community means to you.
“If there were no advent,” writes John Taylor, “we would need to invent it". We human creatures, in spite of all that has happened to us and been done by us, are stillhopeful. Something new, something vital, something promising is always coming, and we are always expecting. Thus in Advent candles are lighted to mark the time of preperation, and with each new light our anticipation grows—as it should. We are, after all, a hopeful people.
For the full story, please go here.
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