Free Republic

Today’s Gospel at Mass is the very familiar one of Martha and Mary. Martha is the anxious worker seeking to please the Lord with a good meal and hospitality. Mary sits quietly at his feet and listens. One has come to be the image of work, the other of prayer.Misinterpreted? In my fifty-two years I have heard many a sermon that interpreted this Gospel passage as a call for a proper balance between work and prayer. Some have gone on to state that we all need a little of Martha and Mary in us and that the Church needs both...

I recently got a harsh letter from a Baptist lady protesting that she could not find the word "Catholic" anywhere in the Bible.True, the earliest occurrence of the term is in a letter of St. Ignatius of Antioch, written 20 years after the last book of the New Testament.  But the idea that the Church is "catholic" pops up everywhere in the gospels and epistles.  The Greek word "catholic" comes from the word for "wholeness" or "fullness."  The "catholic" church is not just a regional sect for an exclusive little group.  Rather it must include the whole family of God...