Martha, Martha
I am very busy these days. I have more work to do with less help and less time. I have too much paperwork; too many appointments and too many meetings to go to. When I get home there is housework to do, yard work to do, social and family obligations, church services, etc. I could continue to go on about how busy I am but you probably wouldn’t have time to read it, because you’re busy too. It’s a funny little irony that while talking about how busy we are sometimes makes us feel special; it actually proves that we are just like everyone else. The fact is that we all have busy lives, but nonetheless our “busy-ness” is one of the first excuses we all (myself included) grab for whenever we are trying to justify why we didn’t do something: I was just too busy; there aren’t enough hours in the day; I didn’t have the time… Let’s face it, being too busy is a tired excuse and we should put it to rest. Being busy has nothing to do with our modern world either: humans have more free time now than at any previous point in our history. Why then are we all so task-oriented? Perhaps it’s because being task-oriented is sometimes easier than being people oriented. Our jobs and chores demand our time and skill, but little else: “busy work” does not place the same emotional demands on us that “people work” does. It can be very easy, especially when working in the healthcare or service industries, to see other people as more occasions for work, and not as human beings with emotional and spiritual needs just like you and me. It can be convenient to make people into objects: to turn them into numbers, or DRGs or food trays, but doing so not only cheats them of the respect they deserve, it also cheats us of the rewards that come with knowing and serving other people. No matter how much time and emotion you put into your work, it will never love you back and it will never thank you. Only people can do that.
There is a familiar story in the Gospel of Luke which has Jesus visiting the home of two sisters: Martha and Mary. While Mary was content to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to him, Martha was totally preoccupied with all of the various chores associated with house guests. When Martha complained to Jesus that her sister wasn’t helping her he responded by saying: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” I think we all have a tendency to become worried and distracted by the many tasks in our lives. Our “busy-ness” pulls us further and further away from being present with and to our fellow human beings. Mary chooses the better part because she chooses to be in the moment with Jesus, fully present to him. Mary doesn’t see this visitor as merely another mouth to feed or more work to be done, she sees him as a blessing in her life that deserves her full attention. While so much of what we work for in life ultimately proves to be momentary and fleeting, the time that we spend with others is never wasted, because those memories and experiences can never be taken from us.
We all have work to do, some of it very important and necessary work indeed, but our work should draw us closer to the people in our lives and the people we serve; it shouldn’t distract us from them. I will probably continue to be busy for the foreseeable future; so will you. But being busy is much more tolerable when you are constantly reminded of who and what you are working for. The work we do has so much more meaning when it has a human face.
Blessings,
Fr. Kevin
