St Martha

Martha is one of the Gospel saints who becomes more impressive the more closely one stays with Scripture. At Bethany she receives Christ into the house, serves Him eagerly, and speaks to Him with the frankness of someone who truly loves Him. The Lord’s reply that Mary had chosen the better part has often been read too quickly. The scene is not a rebuke of action in itself. It holds together two good things, while the listening love of Mary points more directly to the final life of heaven.

Martha’s own strength appears even more clearly in the story of Lazarus. When death strikes her house, it is Martha who goes out to meet Jesus, who speaks to Him with bold grief, and who makes one of the clearest confessions in the Gospel: that He is the Christ, the Son of God. She appears again after Lazarus is raised, serving at table as before, not diminished but deepened. The later Provençal stories that send her to France belong to a cherished regional devotion, but the firm center of her life remains Bethany: hospitality, practical love, grief, faith, and a heart strong enough to meet the Lord in sorrow as well as in service.