When I visit terminally ill people, I often hear similar words to these:
‘Father’ - a dying person tells me – ‘I wasted my life! I didn’t have time for God because I thought
I had to work seven days a week. My work became my god.’ Or
‘Father, I always thought that my family was the most important relationship in life. I didn’t care
about my spiritual life or my faith. I couldn’t find time to pray or to go to church and I didn’t
care if my children or my spouse believed in God. We didn’t speak about religion at home.
Now I am dying in this hospital on my own. My children don’t have time to visit me. Maybe
because I didn’t teach them about the respect they should have for God and their parents?’
Brothers and Sisters, there are times when we need to be busy. We need to work to provide for
our families. That’s obvious. Martha from today’s Gospel represents that busyness
we experience in life. But we cannot allow ourselves to become too busy
and too much focused on earthly reality and on earning money.
The Bible tells us that everything was created by God through Jesus Christ. It seems that
many people make a disastrous mistake and place material things above their Creator. As a result,
earthly occupations and even other human beings become more important to them than God.
It can be a very dangerous situation from a spiritual perspective.
We need to remember that if God is ‘number one’ in our lives everything else will be working well for us.
When He is our priority, we will maintain good relationships with others.
That is what I see happening in my life. I hope that’s your experience as well.
In today’s Gospel the Lord commented that Mary, who sat at His feet and listened to Him,
chose a better part that will not be taken from her
(see Lk 10:39-42). She decided to pay attention to the most important guest on earth. She wanted
to know Jesus better and learn more about a new life he was talking about. She understood that
“man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4).
Her priority was Jesus, not cooking. What is your authentic priority at this moment of your life?
Are you willing to balance your activities and to allow yourself to do God’s will in your life?
Dear friends, let us open our hearts to Jesus and choose Him as the Lord and Saviour once again.
He will enlighten our minds to understand how to focus our attention on Him
and His Heavenly Kingdom. During this week let us work hard at letting go on worrying
and fretting about so many things. Let us put God first in different situations we will face;
and let us imitate Mary and choose 'a better part' meditating upon Jesus’ words every day.