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Thursday, July 28, 2016

Saint Martha

Tomorrow, Friday, July 29th, is the feast of St. Martha , exactly a week after her sister, St. Mary Magdalen.  St. Martha is the patron Saint of cooks and housewives, as well as single women, butlers, dieticians, servers, innkeepers, and travelers.   Not much is known about her, except what we are told in the Gospel and tradition, and as she is a special patroness for most of us, we’re going to focus on her today.

                The first time we meet Martha is in the Gospel of Luke.  Martha was not only the sister of St. Mary Magdalen, but also the sister of Lazarus, whom Our Lord raised from the dead.  They were friends of Christ, and it seems He often came to visit them.  On one of these visits, Mary sat at Christ’s feet, listening to all that He said, while Martha took care of the serving all by herself.  Martha was none too pleased with this arrangement.  She brought the matter to Our Lord’s attention, asking Him to speak to Mary and tell her to help her sister.  Our Lord’s answer, while directed at Martha, is truly for all of us: “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and art troubled about many things.  But one thing is necessary.  Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.”   It’s a beautiful reminder that we cannot get caught up in our household duties to such an extent that we forget that our duty to God comes first.
                St. John’s Gospel tells of the death and resurrection of Lazarus, and Martha’s part in that great event.  Here we see Martha’s great faith in Our Lord.  When Martha hears that Christ has come, she immediately goes to greet Him, and says, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.  But now also I know that whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.”  As she speaks with Our Lord, she also affirms her faith that her brother will rise again “in the resurrection of the last day,” and that Jesus is “Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into the world.”   She had just lost her brother, and yet her faith was unshaken.   That faith was reaffirmed when Christ raised Lazarus from the dead.
                The last time Martha is mentioned in the Gospel is in the next chapter, when Christ and his apostles are having dinner at the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  Very simple, St. John states, “They made him a supper there, and Martha served.”  She quietly and unobtrusively went about her work, and I think we can be sure that she did it with a loving disposition. 
                This is what we know of her according to the Gospels, but there is more that we know of her from tradition.  One version of the story is that Lazarus, Mary and Martha were forced to flee from persecution after St. Stephen was martyred and they moved to Cyprus, and they died after many years of preaching the Gospel there.  Another tradition holds that they and others were put into a ship without sail, oars or rudder, and it was miraculously conducted to Marseilles, on the southern coast of France.  There the three of them began converting the pagans they encountered.  The story goes that in a village in the south of France, Tarascon, St. Martha defeated a dragon that was terrorizing the people there.  She is said to have sprinkled it with holy water, shown it the Cross, and this incapacitated the dragon so that the people could kill it.  Sts. Mary and Martha lived for the rest of their lives in that village and formed a religious community there.  St. Martha’s tomb is in one of the churches of Tarascon.

                May St. Martha encourage us by her example to be cheerful home-makers, who are able to fulfill our tasks to God first, and not to be troubled about many things, and to slay those dragons!

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