What Has Gotten In Your Way?
God knows its not always easy to attend to our spiritual life but I had a very powerful reminder from Acts, Chapter 6.
It is not right for us to neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.
That verse smacked me right in the face. Wasn’t that exactly what I was doing? Wasn’t I being the Martha and taking care of every detail before I sat at the feet of Jesus? Can you imagine having Jesus sitting in your living room and you are in the kitchen doing dishes? Mary chose the better part. She was right in the living room sitting with Jesus and listening to His every word.
We have chosen the better part, too. We have chosen to be Franciscans and with that choice comes obligations.
Our Franciscan Pledge tells us With God’s grace, we will participate as fully and as often as possible in the Mass, the Sacraments (especially Reconciliation), and the official prayer of the Church. We will spend a portion of time each day in personal prayer. And we will be involved in the monthly meeting as an act of worship and a building of community.
We will be involved in the monthly meeting…. There surely will be times when something interferes with your plans. But that should be the exception, not the rule. We have chosen the better part; not the easier part. Our obligation to our Franciscan Life comes before all the other things that get scheduled for a Sunday afternoon. Before other parish functions, before other organizations meetings,
I know I am preaching to the choir, because….you are present at your monthly gatherings. If all of our members made the effort, the rooms would be filled. We have chosen the better part. At our professions, we embraced the Franciscan Life, willingly. What has gotten in the way of that?
When God comes looking for you, do you want Him to find you in the kitchen doing dishes with Martha, or sitting at the feet of His Son?
If there was ever any doubt that Jesus was a fully human male, this passage puts that thought to flight. We all want and need to sit at Jesus’ feet, but I wonder how He and His audience would have felt to discover at the conclusion of His homily that dinner had burned on the stove.