Posted by The WORDS in other words (2009) by Fr Joseph Daniel SVD – Catholic Trade Manila
Memorial of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus – July 29 2025
Image : Wikimedia Commons
Once I was invited to speak in a retreat of a group of sisters. A day before the retreat, I chitchat with one of the retired sisters. She must have been in her late seventies and she was a wonderful person, full of laughter and smiles.
She showed me several papier-mâché masks, rosaries, and of wines holders which she herself had made. She confided that she kept herself busy by doing all these. Age would not stop her from accomplishing what she wanted to do. She was a person of action.
Martha, whose feast we celebrate today, is portrayed in the Gospel as a person of action. She is presented as one who could not sit complacently just doing nothing. In fact we call a person who keeps on working tirelessly as ‘Martha.’
In today’s Gospel passage we see her going out to meet Jesus even if the circumstance and the propriety demanded that she stayed at home. And on meeting Him, we see a tremendous expression of faith of Martha. Her brief dialog with Jesus illustrates her faith that is rooted on solid understanding of who she considered Jesus to be—Messiah, the Son of God.
Martha becomes for all of us an example of a person who acts not only because she was a workaholic or she had to keep herself busy but because she had things to accomplish and not just rely on her faith and wait for things to happen. She becomes for us a role model of “Faith in Action.”
Someone has rightly said, “Have faith as if everything depended on God and then work to achieve that as if everything depended on you.” May St. Martha on her feast bless us all with this gift!
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