Active Membership Pillar: Faithful Participation at Sunday Mass and Holy Days

Today’s Gospel is a beautiful, familiar story. Jesus is visiting his friends, Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus. Martha is busy, serving as hostess to ensure that Jesus has everything he needs. She gets frustrated that her sister, Mary, is not helping. Rather, she is sitting at Jesus’s feet being present to Him. 

The two women are often represented as complements to one another: Martha, a woman of action, and Mary, a woman of contemplation. Both are needed, and at the same time, what is more striking is the fact that they are friends of Jesus. Jesus, fully human and divine, is a friend to these siblings and visits them in their house. He wants to be friends with you and me just as he was a friend to Martha and Mary. 

We grow in our relationship with Christ through our full, active, and conscious participation at Sunday Mass. While at Mass, we contemplate God’s love and sacrifice on the cross for us. We act through our presence and participation at Mass, which should lead to a transformation in our daily life.