Explication
Every day
Biblical commentaries
Martha, Mary and Lazarus always welcome Jesus as a family, which is why it is good that the liturgy brings them together in the same memory, because they are inseparable. The Bethany family is the icon of all our families or communities, in which each member plays an important and unique role. Even if Jesus mainly denounces Martha’s agitation and not her person whom he seems to love like the others, the evangelist Luke suggests that Jesus favors the contemplative figure of Mary in contrast with the active figure of his sister. But the Gospel of John, in another episode reported in chapter 11, underlines the faith of Martha, who precedes Mary to rush towards Jesus coming to console them in these days mourning the death of their brother Lazarus. Lazarus invites us to trust and abandonment which lead to life in fullness.
What do Martha, Mary and Lazarus represent, if not the perfect synthesis of our lives as believers? The ardor of faith and the ardor of love, the ardor of service and the ardor of listening, a triple impulse of trusting relationship towards Jesus which unites them in their differences. Let us therefore not choose, today, between Martha, Mary and Lazarus, because they are all three friends of Jesus, a friendship which unites them together by ties even stronger than those of blood. Let us contemplate in each of them the unique gift that God has placed, a gift that becomes a call.
Other readings: Jer 15, 10.16-21; Psa 58 (59)
