Martha welcomed Jesus into her house. How welcome is Jesus in myhouse, the one around me, and the one inside me, my heart and soul? Martha loved Jesus as Jesus loved her and Mary and Lazarus. Theirs was a second home to Him. But Martha and Mary teach us much about how we engage, or don’t engage, with the Jesus we welcome. He won’t really be in our home if He’s not in our heart.

Martha is distracted with all the serving. She hears Jesus speak but she isn’t listening. Jesus has no issue with the many things she has to do. I’m sure he wanted a good dinner! His reproach is that she doesn’t do them with her heart resting in Him. It’s not what we’re doing; it’s where our heart is when we’re doing it. Martha had the double blessing of His very Presence and His Word, just as we do at Mass. But she was allowing her worries and preoccupations to assume the central place in her heart, pushing Jesus to the sidelines, even when He was right there in front of her. If only she had listened, her worries might well have melted away. Martha was in danger of a divided heart and even of a real sort of idolatry where her concerns reigned supreme, not the Presence and Word of Jesus.

And a clear sign of that is that she even goes up to Him and expects Him to put her demand for Mary’s help before His own teaching. She wants Jesus to agree with her judgment that Mary wasn’t doing what was right in leaving her to serve on her own. Without realising it, Martha is trying subtly to manipulate Jesus into doing what she wants. In the process, she is also disrespecting Mary’s choice to listen intently to Jesus and is passing judgment on her. Martha’s heart was not as free as Mary’s. Martha wanted the storm of anxiety and trouble which she had allowed to stir up in her own heart to take over, too, in the heart of Mary and even of Jesus. No longer were the Presence and Word of Jesus supreme, but Martha’s self-absorption, Martha’s judgment and Martha’s will!

Now Jesus knew that Martha had lost control of herself. He knew she wanted to prepare for him the best meal ever. But in love He had to bring her to her senses. His rebuke is very tender, but firm. He speaks her name twice, “Martha! Martha!” as if to awaken her out of the bad dream she was in. He knew she was not at her best. He knew, for example, that she believed Him to be the Resurrection and the Life, as she will say at the time of Lazarus’ death. Like so many people of real faith, though, she was letting the immediate circumstances of life make her think, judge and act in a way that made her lose sight of her true, deeper self. Jesus will later call Lazarus from the dark confinement of the grave to the bright freedom of the Day of Resurrection. In a way He is also calling Martha out of the turbulent darkness of her self-absorption to awaken her to the light and freedom of her true self. The true self is not the self of the superficial circumstances or feelings of daily life which give you a sore heart, a sore head and a sore belly. Our truest self is the self who persistently returns to the one thing necessary, to faith, hope and love for Jesus above all those daily things. The Presence and Voice of Jesus are always in our heart. It’s a case of letting the whirlwind of distractions blow itself away by sitting at His feet with inner quiet. Jesus, ever so gently yet firmly, judges Martha but only to free her: “You are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.” He is calling Martha to be like Mary, not Mary to be like Martha.

It’s important to repeat that Jesus is not asking Martha to stop doing what she’s doing, but to stop doing it in a way which eclipses the one thing necessary, to stop letting the spirit of anxiety and worry replace the spirit of inner peace and quiet which comes from Christ. If we are truly listening to His Word, and not just hearing it, and if we are truly receiving the Eucharist as more than a routine formality, but rather as a deep spiritual union with Jesus, then the storms and turbulence of things of lesser importance will dissolve of themselves. To worry and fret as a way of life means we have not yet let our faith in Jesus sink to any real depth in our hearts and souls. Faith is not some occasional thing we think about or act out largely on the surface. Faith in Christ draws the eternal life of Christ deep within us. Faith means that, like a sponge in the ocean, our souls are soaked through and through with Christ. It means that we truly welcome Christ into our home, not to start telling Him what He and everyone else should be saying or doing, but to listen and then to do what He desires – indeed, commands of us. To welcome Christ in truth means to let the centre of our thinking, desiring and loving move gradually away from ourselves and increasingly into His divine Heart and Mind. In fact, to welcome Christ results in being welcomed by Christ. It is to let the ideas, values, projects and proposals we form, often under the influence of a secular and materialistic outlook, to be purified and healed by Christ. We simply cannot manipulate Christ or dumb Him down to suit worldly expectations. If we try, we will fail hopelessly and will risk losing our only true hope of real peace and joy.

Nor is there any point in resisting Him with defiant assertions of our own autonomy. We have no autonomy without Him! He gives it to us not to seek God-knows-what sort of self-invented life or to put Him in second place after our family, our work or our money. He gives us free will to come to Him in intelligent freedom and in burning love, to put Him first in all things. Christ desires us to welcome Him only because He desires one day to welcome us into our eternal home with Him. When the artillery shells were falling near the Vatican Embassy in El Salvador in mid-November 1989, I phoned my late father to tell him that “I had a problem.” He responded, “A problem? A problem’s just a problem.” He had fought in Burma, so he could say that. A worry is just a worry. A fret is just a fret. A trouble is just a trouble. And we can say they are just these things not because we are so brave or because they have no importance. They are just these things because the one thing necessary, our beloved Christ, infinitely surpasses them in importance.

Take a quiet few moments today just to stop the runaway train, to sit down with nothing and no-one but our own heart. Listen for Christ crossing its threshold, repeating twice your name, and let Him draw you away for a while from the worries that you have, no matter what they are or how turbulent they are. Give yourself a chance to experience the peace which His wonderful Presence and Power give you in the ocean depths of your own heart. That is how to welcome, and keep welcoming, Christ into your home and to prepare for Him to welcome you into His.