I began to grow suspicious around the third voicemail I got this past weekend of folks singing to me, and I knew that someone must have been coordinating an effort to get people to call and sing me happy birthday. I should
have known it was Fr. Lambert all along, and I am grateful to him, all the singers, and everyone who so graciously wished me a happy birthday and prayed for me last weekend. Ordinarily checking voicemails and emails can be something of a chore, but it was a joy to see such an outpouring of love. Truly, you are all too good to me. Now, on to the Gospel!

I believe that you can take all the tidy (and even the borderline OCD) people in the world and divide them into a number of categories. There are those who simply cannot stand when anything is out of place, and they will stress about it until it’s fixed just right. There are those who have developed a habit of great discipline, perhaps through military service, and it’s just so branded into them that they can no longer live with disorder in their lives. Unfortunately, there are also people like me, who are at their cleanest only when there are more pressing matters to be avoided. From at least as far back as high school, and continuing to the present day, you will never find my room, office, workbag, or car as neat and tidy as when there is some unpleasant task looming on the horizon. I once power-cleaned the entire first floor of my family’s home when I was home on break because I didn’t want to work on my thesis.
 
I don’t know for a fact that this is the dynamic at play in the story of Martha and Mary that we hear today, but it certainly applies to many of us trying to grow in our faith in the midst of a hectic world.

Martha is upset with her sister Mary for abandoning her (and all the work of cleaning and serving) so that she could sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to Him teach. Externally, it looks as if one of them is doing all the work and the other one is relaxing. But in reality, while the external appearances may not show it, Mary’s work of cultivating her interior life can be strenuous work as well, and it is the same work that we are called to by our Lord each day.  For centuries in the Church there have been  religious orders that have dedicated themselves to building up their interior lives as a community so that they can grow close to God and share the fruits of His love with the rest of the world that does not share that same call.
 
There will always be the temptation to engage in active distraction and convince ourselves that we are too busy to pray. There will always be something to clean, something to organize, something to dust. (When I got to dusting, it was a sign of level five crisis procrastination.) But Jesus waits for us patiently in prayer, in Church, in every tabernacle throughout the world. We are certainly called to turn our everyday efforts into our daily prayers. It’s part of the vocation of living in the world but not being of the world. But if we are going to do that, we must first set aside the time to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him. I pray that we as a region take more time to do that in the coming days, so that our hearts can be set ablaze by the love of the Sacred Heart and we can share that love with the world.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McC