We have two readings today that should be very familiar to us. I think all of us remember the story of Jonah and the whale. I remember hearing this story from Sunday school when I was a child growing up in the Methodist church in Chicago, since that wonderful story so appeals to a child’s imagination and sense of wonder. Also, today, we hear the story of Mary and Martha from Luke’s Gospel. To me, these two reading from the Bible are all about choices. In the book of Jonah, the city of Nineveh had made a choice of turning its back on God and choosing another path. However, after being called to repentance and conversion by the Lord through his messenger Jonah, the city appears to be choosing to repent and to return to the faith. In our Gospel reading, Mary and Martha both make choices in how to live out their faith. Martha chooses to serve the Lord through her work and her actions, wanting him to feel welcomed and honored in her home, trying to be attentive to his needs. Mary, however, chooses to sit and listen to Jesus’ stories and teachings. Those of us who are people of work and action, of which I can identify with, know what it is like to have so much work to do, that we probably identify with Martha and can understand how she feels. However, taking time to be silent, to pray, and to enjoy the presence of the Lord are important parts of life as well. We need to make time for those things in our daily lives, to make them a priority. The story of Mary and Martha calls our attention the way we need to slow down and be present to the Lord. We need to find a way to spend time with Jesus in the midst of all our activities and distractions. We, too, will then see how this is the better part.
As we hear the familiar story of Mary and Martha today, of Mary wanting to spend time with the Lord, with Martha feeling the call to action and to serve him, we think about the balance we must have in our life of faith. We are called to prayer and worship, but we are also called to action and live out the values of our faith. In the past week, we have celebrated saints such as St Vincent de Paul, St Therese of Lisieux, St Jerome, and St Francis of Assisi - all very popular saints and all great examples of faith for all of us. They felt the call to live out the faith in their lives in different ways, with all of them being called to both prayer and action.
That brings us to the saint we celebrate today: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa was very much a woman of great faith, of prayer, and of action. Although her work and ministry with the poor of India was known by many throughout the world for many years, Mother Teresa achieved great worldwide acclaim when she was named as the recipient of the Noble Peace Prize in 1979 "for her work for bringing help to suffering humanity,” which were the words used by the Nobel prize committee. Born in 1910 in Macedonia of Albanian parents, she entered the Sisters of Loretto in 1928 at the age of 18. She served as a religious sister in a high school in India, teaching history and geography to daughters of wealthy families. However, she was affected by the poverty and suffering that she saw around her. In 1946, while riding on a train, she heard God call her to serve the poor in a special way, which led her to leaving the Sisters of Loretto and establishing the Missionaries of Charity. Until her death on September 5, 1997, Mother Teresa worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor in India and throughout the world through the work of the sisters in her religious congregation. She became an example of Christ’s love for the poor to both Christians and non-Christians alike. Mother Teresa has many wonderful quotes. Here are two of them:
“Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”
“If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.”
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2003 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2016. We unite our prayers with the prayers of Mother Teresa today.
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