A Woman's Touch

Having no public Masses this Lenten season has made me realize just how much there is to be done during Lent around the church building. This time of year is usually filled with the hustle and bustle of plastic tubs being brought down, towels being folded, the “props” and environment of Holy Week being created just like the year before and the year before that. Staff is usually busy with final Holy Week countdown tasks and the copier is normally roaring at high speed. As the parish community is encouraged to settle in for long Masses, I am usually standing in the background, clutching the church keys and seeing if I need to assist in any way. Being an active participant in Holy Week is part of who I am and it is ultimately the ritual actions of these holiest of Masses and services that powers me through another year of working in parish life. This year, I have to find a new way to be active. It has certainly been ramped up over the last couple of weeks trying to find what we are supposed to be serving to parishioners and the burden of not being able to be with everyone to actively serve during Holy Week has been hard. And so I went seeking a gospel story that would help me as we head towards the end of this year’s Lenten journey.

^“As they continued their journey he entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary [who] sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.’ The Lord said to her in reply, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.’” (Lk 10:38-42)

As the oldest of three girls, I struggled with Jesus telling Martha that her work to serve was less important than her (I’ve always assumed younger) sister sitting and listening and doing nothing to help. We don’t get Martha’s response to Jesus’ words. In my version of the untold part of the story, she sassed back with some witty words for Jesus and they all laughed and settled down together to relax. I tend to think that Martha and Jesus were a bit like each other in personality because Martha seemed comfortable enough in front of Jesus to just be herself and say the things on her heart. As a woman working in the Catholic Church, I know I was first called to serve the church in the way Martha was doing. Frantic. Overwhelmed. Burdened. Being like Mary was not something encouraged as a church worker. Being like Mary was for my own time. Church time meant work, work, work. But should I always prefer to do the work rather than sit and listen? Why am I hurting when I could be listening to what God is saying to me? Am I afraid of what I might hear and how I might be called to live differently? Do my actions add to Holy Week or distract me from the experience of participating like Mary?

I am reminded, in my struggle to let go, that God has this under control. Jesus knows how I am feeling. He is looking right into my heart and telling me to come relax. I am being led to enter into the space that Martha’s sister Mary found first at the feet at Jesus in her home and again at the feet of Jesus at the foot of the cross after he had died and the crowds had dispersed. This quiet space is the active participation I am being called to enter in preparation for Holy Week. Jesus is begging me and all of us to let go of being anxious and worried and to bring us all to the sacred space of our homes during Holy Week.