Martha & Mary: A Woman's Perspective

At Jesus's Feet by Nathan Greene

Despite what the secular media want to portray, the Catholic Church is not an anti-woman, misogynistic institution. Instead, the Church esteems the equal dignity of all people. If any of these critics, would actually attend Mass, they would see how vital women are to the Church. It is in this light that I have asked Sandy Leners to write a guest post each week. This weekly contribution will be called Martha and Mary. Sandy will give us a woman's perspective on Catholicism. I have asked her to simply write about topics that interest her. 


Sandy, along with her husband Lindon (a founding member of Joe Catholic), heads up our RCIA team at St. Catherine of Siena. Additionally, Sandy is involved in a number of other ministries, including a new women's group called the Ladies of the Knights, a auxiliary women's group who support their family members who are Knights of Columbus.

Mary and Martha could learn from St. Joseph. Yesterday [Editor's note: this was submitted Wednesday, but I wasn't able to edit it until today.] was the Solemnity of St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus and faithful chaste husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus. Scripture tells us that Joseph was a righteous man, a just man. Additionally, we can glean from the Gospel accounts that Joseph had guts...well he had much more than that. He possessed virtues that all of us should strive to receive. While silent throughout scripture, Joseph exemplifies all of the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. As a result of these virtues, Joseph BELIEVED. He was a man of faith and it was his faith that brought him through the toughest times of all.

He raised Jesus and he taught him a craft. St. Joseph is often portrayed in art lovingly holding the child, Jesus. He was the first man to hold Christ in his hands, much like the priest at the consecration. He was indeed the man closest to Christ. He had to have loved Jesus with his whole heart. Additionally, he also had to love Mary with his whole heart. His faith and open heart saved his life, and the life of Jesus and Mary at least twice, and he just kept listening. We say "Praise God"...well Joseph did praise God in each and every "yes" to what he was asked to do. That steady "being-there-for-them" man that he was...well it doesn't get any better than that.

Can we measure up to that? Yes, we can. It doesn't have to be all at once. Remember the account in St. John's Gospel (today's Gospel reading, one of the scrutinies) about Jesus' friend Lazarus having died. Both Mary and Martha said to Jesus, "If you had been here our brother would not have died!" Despite their grief, they both had faith that Jesus would raise their brother on the last day. They knew Jesus was the Messiah. Even though they believed, they still didn't quite get what that meant.

The raising of Lazarus is a touching account because it displays the complete humanity of Christ. First, he became perturbed at the people for their lack of belief (the commentators of the Ignatius study bible point out that he may have been angry at the presence of evil). Next, we see that he wept at the loss of His friend. Jesus also had pity on those who STILL did not understand who he was or why he came. Therefore, Jesus demonstrated His full divinity by calling a four-day old dead man out of his tomb and bringing him back to life! Was it at that moment they all finally got it? We will learn next week that sadly the answer to that is no.

Nevertheless, we can measure up. We can come to believe. We are called to a New Evangelization. This means loving more, talking more (or listening), being kinder, raising ourselves to a better understanding of just how much Jesus does love us. Yes! We can measure up! We can reflect on this during this Lenten Season, and we can pray for guidance to persevere in finding God's will for us each and every day. Like Martha, we can be busy in practicing virtues (works) and like Mary we can listen to what God is saying to us (contemplative). Each of us, in our hearts, has the capacity to hear and feel the goodness of the Lord.