Mtr Mary Trainor

Dear friend,

“Patty, go bring us a Pepsi.”

Well, I’m the Patty in this scenario, and the speaker of this “work order” was my mother. A scene repeated many times over the years.

I never realized how embedded these words were in family lore until my brother said them to me earlier this year.

“Patty, go bring us a Pepsi.

Or perhaps what is embedded is not the words—but what they say about my role in the family. But let’s save that for another Daily Bread
***

When Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, the next words in Luke’s Gospel are telling. “Immediately she got up and began to serve them.”

She got up and served them.

I must admit, in my first reading of this years ago, my eyes stopped right there: She got up and served them.

A rather inglorious task, I felt, compared to the magnificent healing all had just witnessed. Mundane even. Unworthy?

Or is it? After all, a woman’s role in a first-century Jewish household was to tend to her family’s basic needs. What would it be like if she couldn’t? It was fundamental and essential. It was honorable.

Peter’s mother-in-law—with Jesus’ help, of course—shakes off the clutches of the sickbed and resumes her critical household role. Immediately. 

“Patty, go bring us a Pepsi” by no means suggests a household position of comparable value. And, yet, if I were to hear my mother say those words again, I would jump up from the couch—immediately—and head for the refrigerator. And be honored to do so.

Mtr Mary