Dai­ly Reflec­tion
July 22, 2007

PRE-PRAYER­ING

“Don’t be so prac­ti­cal!” “Don’t be so imprac­ti­cal!” These are two fre­quent­ly-used state­ments, both reflect­ing frus­tra­tion in some­body else. It all depends on expec­ta­tions. We do say that we are “prac­tic­ing” Catholics or Chris­tians. This could mean that prac­tice will even­tu­ate into per­fec­tion. Rather, I think it means that we are doing some­thing accord­ing to our reli­gious tra­di­tions in accept­able ways. Lawyers and doc­tors prac­tice too, but nurs­es and teach­ers don’t prac­tice, they “do”.
In prepar­ing this week for the litur­gy for the week­end we can reflect on how we view lives lived with­in the Eucharis­tic bless­ing. Just for the sake of reflec­tion, what if we say that prac­tic­ing our faith, or the virtues is done in expec­ta­tion of being eval­u­at­ed, judged as to our inad­e­qua­cies. This would ren­der us grad­ed and usu­al­ly not very high­ly. We can pray with God’s being both prac­ti­cal and imprac­ti­cal accord­ing to our views, but the activ­i­ties of our lives, when flow­ing from the Eucharist, are not a prac­tice, but a per­fec­tion. We “do” faith and virtues and Jesus is extend­ed through the prac­ti­cal and the imprac­ti­cal as well. We can pray with our strug­gles not to be judged, but more sim­ply, to “Jesus”.

REFLEC­TION

In Gen­e­sis, as well as in the oth­er four books of the Pen­ta­teuch, var­i­ous schools or the­o­log­i­cal tra­di­tions con­tribute their views of God and God’s deal­ings with the Jew­ish nation. The sto­ry which forms our First Read­ing empha­sizes the tran­scen­dence of the almighty God and the ten­der­ness of this God’s embrace of our humanity.

Abra­ham is tak­ing his ease in the late after­noon and he notices three “men” stand­ing near­by. He did not see them or hear them approach­ing, they just appeared. From his imme­di­ate actions of wel­come, we assume that Abra­ham did not have many vis­i­tors or he would have soon run out of cat­tle and run his wife to an ear­ly grave.

Abra­ham invites his guests to be treat­ed by Sarah’s hard labors and he seems to enter­tain the guests while din­ner is being pre­pared. Here comes the the­o­log­i­cal view of God. After din­ner, one of them asks where “Sarah” Abraham’s wife might be. When told, the speak­er fore­tells a promise. The speak­er knows the name of Abraham’s wife and bless­es her, in her advanced years, the con­sum­mate bless­ing of those times, a son.

God knows, God vis­its, and God makes promis­es and keeps them. Now the big ques­tion is of course, was God good to Abra­ham, because he and Sarah were so wel­com­ing? Does God come to bless, because of us or because of Who God is? It is quite imprac­ti­cal for Sarah to have a child at her age, but a very prac­ti­cal promise is made. This kind of sto­ry reveals more about the mys­te­ri­ous God than some­thing of the human activ­i­ties to attract God. Abra­ham and Sarah had to trust what they heard.

The Gospel is a rather cute lit­tle sto­ry, but with­in it lie some very impor­tant fea­tures of God and what is expect­ed by God in our response. Jesus is wel­comed. Martha is doing the prac­ti­cal things of get­ting a prop­er meal ready for Jesus the prophet. Mary is doing noth­ing except lis­ten­ing. Martha com­plains about the imprac­ti­cal­i­ty of her sis­ter. Jesus replies with some­thing sim­ple and impor­tant. End of story.

Luke presents Jesus as a mod­el for His prophet­ic dis­ci­ples whom He has sent out rely­ing on the hos­pi­tal­i­ty of oth­ers and there­by, rely­ing on God. Luke presents Martha as the right­eous wel­com­er who does the prac­ti­cal things accord­ing to the Jew­ish reli­gious and cul­tured ways. Luke presents Mary as a per­son of the Good News. She does the imprac­ti­cal thing of “lis­ten­ing to him speak.” She has cho­sen “the bet­ter part”, which is allow­ing the Good News to be heard.

The sto­ry of last week’s Gospel imme­di­ate­ly comes before these final vers­es of this chap­ter in Luke’s Gospel. The read­er or lis­ten­er to the Gospel would under­stand that the very prac­ti­cal thing the “Good Samar­i­tan” did, is what every­body would have to do if they sat at the feet of Jesus and lis­tened to the whole Gospel. Martha is right­eous by her express­ing her reli­gious tra­di­tions. Luke is pre­sent­ing Mary as how each of us con­tin­ues the life of Jesus, by lis­ten­ing and then get­ting up and doing all that the Gospel of Luke has offered.

This is not a fam­i­ly dis­pute, but a call to a rad­i­cal way of liv­ing. We so eas­i­ly lis­ten to what we want to hear. What Jesus is say­ing in all the Gospels is not exact­ly all we want to hear. Jesus’ con­ver­sa­tion with us, if we lis­ten, will change, con­vert us and we would rather “get out in that kitchen and rat­tle those pots and pans.” We would rather jus­ti­fy our­selves by lis­ten­ing to our ways and doing our thing in hopes that God would be pleased, shmoozed, and appeased.

It is quite enjoy­able to under­line all the vers­es in the Gospels which we find dis­taste­ful and or incon­ve­nient. I find the Gospel gets quite a bit short­er. Those are the vers­es we don’t want to hear, because they call us to change images of our­selves, of oth­ers, of life. The real­ly good news is that Jesus just keeps sit­ting in those pages speak­ing and wait­ing for us to tune in.

“I stand at the door and knock, says the Lord. If any­one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sit down to sup­per.” Rev­e­la­tion 3:20