Suy Niệm Tìn Mừng Thứ Ba Tuần 27 Thường Niên

 Suy Niệm Tìn Mừng Thứ Ba Tuần 27 Thường Niên

Trong đoạn Tin Mừng hôm nay đã giúp cho chúng ta có một sự phân biệt về sự chú tâm vào việc vào tiếp xúc Chúa Giêsu của hai chị bà Maria và bà Mattha. Để tiếp đón Chúa Giêsu vị khách quý của gia đình một cách chu đáo, bà Martha đã rất lo lắng và chú tâm tới các chi tiết tỉ mỉ trong việc tiếp đón Chúa, còn trong khi đó, Mary đã chỉ có biết chú ý tới Chúa Giêsu, Bà tiếp đón Chúa bằng cách ngồi nghe Chúa dạy, hầu hạ bên Ngài như là vị khách quý của họ. Thế nhưng Mary được ca ngợi, còm Martha thì bị trách mắng. Bà Martha bị Chúa Giêsu trách không phải là vì sự bận rộn của bà trong việc nấu ăn đãi tiệc mừng Chúa, nhưng vì bà đã quá lo lắng, bận tâm và cũng vì thái độ oán giận của bà. Bà Martha muốn có sự tiếp đón Chúa một long trọng. Mục đích của bà thật vô cùng đáng quý nhưng mục đích tốt của bà đã để lẫn lộn với rất nhiều động cơ khác. Vì thế Thánh Phanxicô de Sales nói rằng bà thiếu sự đơn sơ. Thật ra chỉ có một mục đích và chỉ có một động lực quan trọng nhất đó là đến với tình yêu Thiên Chúa, nhưng bà đã đánh mất vì sụ bận rộn của bà.

Qua bài Tin Mừng hôm nay, chúng ta nhận thấy rằng có lẽ bà Martha đã quên rằng không phải chỉ có một mình bà đã mời Chúa Giêsu, nhưng Chúa Giêsu cũng đã mời bà. Những sự tiếp đón, hay lòng hiếu khách nào mà chúng ta đã sẵn sàn để tiếp đón cho những người khách của chúng ta? nếu chúng ta để họ ngồi một mình trong phòng khách váng lạnh, trong khi chúng ta quá bận rộn với việc nấu nướng, đài đàng mà không có thời giờ với họ? Nếu chúng ta muốn được gần gũi với Chúa, chúng ta cần phải dành thời giờ để gần với Chúa Giêsu, ngồi bên cạnh Ngài và lắng nghe những gì mà Chúa muốn nói với chúng ta. Đây là những gì Chúa Giêsu mong muốn nơi mỗi người chúng ta.

Tue 7th Oct 2014 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the gospel passage we have a distinction between being attentive to the details of hosting and of being attentive to the guests. Martha was very anxious and attentive to the details of hosting whereas Mary was very attentive to Jesus as their guest. Mary is praised and Martha is challenged.

Martha is challenged not for being so busy but for being so anxious, for her attitude and for her resentment in her busyness. Francis de Sales says she lacked simplicity. Martha wanted to treat our Lord well. Her intention was extremely praise-worthy but it was so mixed up with so many other motives that the one and only important motive of loving God was lost. Simplicity means that we do not consider or do not have any other aim in all that we do but the single desire to please God. Simplicity is inseparable from charity, from the way we treat one another. We normally please God when we love our neighbor as ourselves: when we sincerely listen, kindly respond and graciously attend to the needs of another.

In today's Gospel we see that perhaps Martha forgot that not only had she invited Jesus but that Jesus had invited her. What kind of hospitality do we give our guest if we leave them alone while we are too busy to spend time with them? If we want to get close to the Lord, we need to take the time to go with Jesus, sit at his feet and listen to him. This is what Jesus expects of each and every one of us.

Lord, with Your grace may we attend to one another’s needs kindly and graciously, doing what needs to be done and being present and attentive to one another.

Tuesday 27th Ordinary Time: 2022

Opening Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, bring me your peace. Allow me to put aside any distractions and focus on your word. Allow it to change my heart to become more peaceful.

Encountering Christ:

1. Wasting Time with Jesus: In this Gospel passage, Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to him. This is the position of discipleship: humbly being taught by the Lord. It looked like inactivity and seemed like a waste of time to Martha, but we can be assured that nothing spent on Jesus is ever wasted. A weekly hour of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is one way that we can lavish the gift of our time on Jesus. We may consider our schedules and think we do not have time to spend an hour doing nothing but praying at the feet of Jesus. However, the fruits of regularly spending time adoring Christ include having interior peace in the soul, a better awareness of God’s love for us, and less anxiety and stress, just to name a few. This is the “better part” that Jesus is calling us to. If your parish does not have perpetual Eucharistic adoration, you could choose a time each week to pray at the tabernacle in the sanctuary.

2. Centered on One Thing: Sometimes, this passage is interpreted as pitting prayer against work. This is not teaching against working for the Lord. Instead, this passage shows us how to work for the Lord more peacefully. Martha was “anxious and worried about many things.” Her heart was distracted by her to-do list, and she was overwhelmed by all the many tasks necessary to serve the Lord. The thorns of worldly anxieties choked out the presence of the Lord (cf. Matthew 13:22). Now compare this to Mary, who sat peacefully at Jesus’ feet. Bishop Barron comments on this: “What Mary has chosen is…the focused life. She is anchored, rooted in the unum necessarium (one necessary thing).” Her whole being is centered on one thing: Jesus. The Benedictine motto ora et labora, pray and work, is a helpful way to think about this idea. We can prayerfully ground all the works we do in Christ, and he will bring us his peace.

3. Man of Peace: St. Francis of Assisi is known as a man of deep peace who wished all to share in Christ’s peace. He and the brother Franciscans greeted everyone they met with the words, “May the Lord give you peace!” Pope Francis chose to be called after St. Francis of Assisi, “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation.” St. Paul wrote that Christ’s peace guards us against anxiety: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7). We can ask ourselves, do we truly value and prioritize Christ’s peace? Do we seek to bring it to others? Is there discord in any of our relationships? If so, how can Christ’s peace come to us in our conflicts?

Conversing with Christ: Jesus, I believe that you bring me the peace that the world cannot give (cf. John 14:27). Please increase that peace in my heart. When my heart is troubled and afraid, speak my name and calm my spirit. Help me center my life on you so that all the work I do to serve you and others may be rooted in the gaze of your love.

Resolution: Lord, today, by your grace, I will pray the Peace Prayer of St. Francis.

2021 Tuesday 27th Ordinary Time

Opening Prayer: I am so grateful to be able to set aside this time to be with you and contemplate your Word, O Lord. I am so grateful that you have given me the gift of faith, by which I know with utter certainty that you are the source of all the truth and grace I need to grow in wisdom and holiness. I consecrate this time to your glory and the advance of your eternal Kingdom. Open my heart to receive and embrace whatever you want to give me today.

Encountering Christ:

· Worried and Anxious: Jesus knows what we are going through. When Martha came to him with her complaint, he acknowledged and expressed clearly and precisely the turbulence she was experiencing: Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. Surely he could say the same thing about us right now. How heavily the worries and anxieties of life weigh upon us! Something within us makes us think we need to solve them all, right away, and everyone around us should come to our aid. The voice of the Lord reaches out to us amid the noise of our self-absorption and invites us to release the tangle of worries that paralyzes our hearts: Only one thing is necessary: to stay close to the Lord, to listen to him, to trust in him, to do all things joyfully for him. Somehow, Martha’s good and loving desire to serve Jesus and his disciples had lost its purity and so lost its joyfulness. The same thing happens to us. We want to do good things. We want to build up Christ’s Kingdom. We want to fulfill the duties of our state in life. But as we engage in all our activity, we tend to lose sight of the real reason behind everything—simply to love God and love our neighbor. Whenever our loving work becomes a joyless burden, we need to do exactly what Martha did: burst in on Jesus, unburden our hearts, and listen carefully to whatever he has to say to us.

· St. Faustina’s Wisdom: Today is the optional liturgical memorial of St. Faustina Kowalska, famous for her Diary, called Divine Mercy in My Soul. A Polish nun who lived during the first decades of the twentieth century, St. Faustina was privileged to receive visions and locutions from the Lord, through which Jesus wanted to give the Church and the world a remarkable and long-standing reminder of the power and the vastness of his redeeming mercy. The Diary contains many of St. Faustina’s dialogues with Jesus, but it also contains narrations and descriptions of her own spiritual journey. Reading the Diary straight through, one can’t help being struck by the difficulties and sufferings involved in the saint’s learning to trust Jesus more and more. Even after having received so many extraordinary graces, St. Faustina continually needed to follow in Martha’s footsteps—entering into Christ’s presence with her anxieties, worries, complaints, and confusions, seeking counsel and relief. We can take comfort in that, because we too identify very easily with St. Martha, who was burdened with much serving and who was anxious and worried about many things. We too need constant reminders that only one thing is necessary, and constant encouragement to choose the better part. Perhaps we can follow St. Faustina’s example and make, over and over again, the following resolution: “I will not allow myself to be so absorbed in the whirlwind of work as to forget about God. I will spend all my free moments at the feet of the Master hidden in the Blessed Sacrament” (Diary, 82).

· True God and True Man: Every Sunday we pray the Creed, and we publicly profess our faith in Jesus Christ as, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God” who “was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.” Why would God, the all-powerful creator of the universe, become man? Why would he lower himself to the point that he could be sitting in Martha’s living room and get involved in a squabble between sisters? Isn’t that kind of thing below the dignity of God? Maybe if you think of God in some other way, it would be. But the one, true God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ clearly shows us that our most normal human experiences, even a squabble between sisters, even an impertinent outburst flowing from stress and worry, is meant to be a place of grace, a space to encounter and embrace Jesus in a new and enriching way. Jesus speaks directly into Martha’s complaint and points out a truth that we can live by. Jesus was so close to Martha and Mary that Mary felt comfortable sitting at his feet as he spoke in the living room, and Martha felt comfortable complaining and bringing him right into the nitty-gritty of her family affairs. Is Jesus that close to me? Am I that real in my conversations with him, or do I feel as if I have to put on some kind of show and hide my true self from the Lord? To what extent has Jesus truly become incarnate in my life?

Conversing with Christ: Lord, when I picture you responding to Martha’s complaint, I picture you smiling. You know how weak we are, and how petty we can become when we feel stressed out. I want to learn to go to you as soon as I lose my interior peace, as soon as I lose my spiritual balance. I want to learn to see your smile and hear your gentle corrections and guidance. I want to learn to be content and joyfully satisfied with the one thing necessary, and to choose every single day, every single moment of my life, “the better part.” St. Faustina, please pray for me!

Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will take a few moments to write down in my own words what “the one thing necessary” means to me and what “choosing the better part” looks like for me in the current season of my life.

Tuesday 27th Ordinary Time 

In the first reading the people of Nineveh did penance and reformed at the preaching of Nineveh and the compassionate God did not destroy the city as he had threatened. In the Gospel reading we see the sisters Martha and Mary welcoming Jesus and his disciples as their guests. Martha busied herself with the food preparations while Mary "sat at the Lord's feet to listen to his words."

Martha forgot that not only had she invited Jesus but that Jesus had invited her. What kind of hospitality do we give our guest if we leave them alone while we are too busy to spend time with them? Our daily lives are filled with a whole variety of tasks to do: work, rest and recreation, time with family and friends, a thousand-and-one things to do and finish.

We all have to be busy like Martha: we need work for our livelihood, food must be prepared, the house must be maintained, and guests must be taken care of. Doing all this indeed is doing God's work in our daily lives: do we find God somehow in these ordinary and extraordinary chores? Mary teaches us another lesson: to be quiet and be with the Lord. This too is as important, if not more, than what we need to do to live.

If we want to get close to the Lord, we need to take the time to go with Jesus, sit at his feet and listen to him. This is what Jesus expects of each and every one of us. If we don’t know what to say to Him, Rosary could be the best tool to start the conversation with Him through the Virgin Mary his mother.

Do we have time for the Lord in prayer? Do we somehow remember the Lord in our busy workdays? The important thing is to live our lives in God's presence, for the greater glory of God. Let’s ask our Lord Jesus gives us the knowledge of how to find love and serve God in the midst of our daily routines lives.

REFLECTION

People frequently interpret today's Gospel story as giving an insight into Jesus' attitude toward two states of life, the contemplative and the active. Martha, they see as embodying the active type of person, and Mary the contemplative. And, of course, Jesus tells Martha that her sister, Mary, has chosen the better part. And so they conclude Jesus therefore thinks the contemplative way of life is superior to the active. But you can't establish it from today's Gospel story. Jesus was not suggesting that Martha's activity-filled life was a less worthy type of service or was morally or spiritually less acceptable than Mary's contemplative way. Martha's service to Jesus was very much in line with the activity of the Good Samaritan in yesterday's Gospel, showing kindness to, being concerned about people ... and we saw how Jesus praised the Samaritan.

It's not a matter of measuring Martha against Mary or activity against contemplation. Both were needed in the early days of the Church, and both are necessary today. And both should be part of the life of every individual Christian. On one occasion Jesus' lifestyle was so active that his family thought he might be going out of his mind. On another occasion we see him so weary that he was sleeping in a boat, undisturbed by a fierce storm that had his companions, experienced fishermen, crying out in terror. So weary, the storm did not wake him up. Luke also notes, however, that Jesus was always going off to a quiet place to spent time listening to his Father.

Why did Jesus chide Martha? Not, surely, because Martha was activity-prone. You could say this about Jesus himself. Rather because Martha criticized Mary, who took time to sit and listen to Jesus, to be contemplative. Active people tend today to lose themselves in activity as did Martha then. We need also to incorporate into our active lives a bit of the contemplative.

REFLECTION

Mary lives by the spirit, and Jesus declares this to be of first importance. He is not, however, condemning Martha's hospitality. Jesus knows Martha's faith. But there is a greater kind of hospitality, and Mary has found it. It is in listening to the Lord, opening not only our house but also our mind and heart to Jesus. Most of us are, or have been, the Martha type. We rush around and work long hours, perhaps for motives that are far less noble than Martha's. Martha was working overtime to please Jesus, to take care of his needs, to honor him. But what of our own motives? When we work long hours, is it because we aim to increase our income so that we can maintain a fine house and every comfort? We often forget that we can't take our wealth with us beyond the grave.

In today's Gospel we see that perhaps Martha forgot that not only had she invited Jesus but that Jesus had invited her. What kind of hospitality do we give our guest if we leave them alone while we are too busy to spend time with them? If we want to get close to the Lord, we need to take the time to go with Jesus, sit at his feet and listen to him. This is what Jesus expects of each and every one of us.