Jeremiah 13:1-11 / Matthew 13:31-35: St. Martha
God talks about his people: "I made them cling to me closely."
One approach to prayer is to get in touch with ourselves before trying to get in touch with God. For example, we sit in a chair and relax. We become aware of our clothes gripping our shoulders, legs, arms. We feel the chair gripping our body, shoes gripping our feet. When we are in touch with ourselves, we then try getting in touch with God. For example, we pray to God like this:
"Father, you embrace us as certainly as the clothes we wear, as the chair we sit in. May each sensation we feel deepen our awareness of your loving embrace."
The inspiration for this approach to prayer is today's reading, where God uses the analogy of clothes gripping the body to express his close relationship with people.
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How aware are we of God's closeness to us? "We need not cry very loud; he is closer than we think." Brother Lawrence
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It would be rather awkward and embarrassing to talk about undergarments in a sacred and holy context of the homily. Even the mention of the word "underwear" will irritate some sensitivities. Yet the 1st reading was so graphic in description about the loincloth and its decay. But the purpose of graphic language is to irritate and cause discomfort to us. Because when we see decay, we get this disgusted feeling.
When God sees our spiritual decay caused by sin, He too gets disgusted. And He will employ all means to wake us up to our decay and destruction, even using an embarrassing and awkward item like a loincloth.
Whenever we see something that is rotting and decaying, we turn away in disgust. Yet it is strange that whenever we sin, we turn away from God and we foolishly swirl in rot and decay. Yet the Lord reaches out to us sinners and binds Himself to us just as man wraps a loincloth closely around his waist.
God wants to wake us up from our foolishness and stupidity so that we will cling to Him as a loincloth clings to the waist of a man. Yet along with the mercy and forgiveness of God, there is also a stern warning. As the Lord says: If you do not stand by Me, you will not stand at all (Isa 7:9)
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St. Martha
Opening Prayer
We honor today Saint Martha as a woman of faith and an unobtrusive servant of people Give us her faith in Christ as the Lord of life and the first fruits of the resurrection. Make us willing servants of one another who attend to others in their need. We ask your this through Christ our Lord.
Intercessions
- That the Gospel of the Lord may keep striking priests, catechists and all other ministers of the Word as a message of good news for our day and that they may proclaim it with conviction and warmth, we pray:–
- That those who promised fidelity to one another in marriage may keep growing in love and reflecting God’s love for his Church, we pray:–
- That among us here and in all Christian communities, there may be committed love and loyalty to God and one another, we pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
Lord our God, In every eucharist your Son Jesus serves us at his table. Let him fill us with the love and dedication needed to wait on our brothers and sisters without imposing ourselves, but in all simplicity, because we know that in them we are serving Jesus Christ our Lord.
Prayer after Communion
Lord our God, in this eucharist your Son Jesus Christ has nourished us with the bread of resurrection and life. Strengthened by this food, may we live as your people called to rise already in this life above our failures and sins and may we also raise up one another to bring about together a better world where love and justice prevail. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Blessing
Here is the covenant that the Lord has made with you. If only we were more aware of how near to us God wanted to be. May God keep you in his love and bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Reflection:
Life without end
Today, the Church commemorates Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Recognizing their welcome of and witness to Christ, in the year 2020 Pope Francis has approved modifying the liturgical feast of St. Martha on July 29 to include her sister and brother, Mary and Lazarus, on the church’s universal calendar of feast days.
The Gospel tells us how Jesus reached out to the family of Martha and Mary after their brother had died. Martha believed in the resurrection of the dead. She believes that her brother Lazarus will be raised to life along with all the righteous and will take part in God's Kingdom. It is her way of understanding the resurrection - perhaps similar to many of us today - Christians.
How often do we encounter people who lose faith after a family member dies? The death of a loved one, especially if it occurs tragically, makes us doubt whether God exists. The resurrection of the dead is too far away and does not make any sense. Why would God let one die only to bring him back to life again.
Our Lord wants us to learn this lesson today. In our faith, we do not believe in a death and a resurrection that will take place at the end of the world. Instead, we are called to believe that a person redeemed by Christ does not die.
Let us suppose that in the womb of a mother there are twins. It is possible for them to see, understand, and communicate with each other during the nine months of gestation. They only know their own little world and cannot imagine what life is like outside. The only thing they know is the kind of life they have inside the womb.
After nine months, the twins are born by turn. And the one who was born a few seconds later and remained, even for a short time, in the womb of the mother, would certainly think: “My brother is dead. He’s not here anymore. He disappeared and left me …” and he cries. But thebrother is not dead. In other words, he left a restricted, short, limited form of life and entered another.
The believer, Jesus tells Martha, will never experience death at all but will be born into a new life. He enters the world of God, taking part in a life without limits. It is a life without end.
