Mtr Mary Trainor

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways  …*

Dear friend,

Mary and Martha. The sisters from Bethany. They and their brother Lazarus are not only followers of Jesus, they also are his friends.

This bond explains the personal dinner at their home for Jesus. Martha slaves over a hot stove. Mary hangs onto Jesus’ every word. Luke’s Gospel today shares Martha’s resentment and Jesus’ corrective words.

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The story of Mary and Martha never gets old for me. Sisters compete for the attention of their dinner guest, their different approaches leading to a minor conflict, small jealousies springing to flame like a well-kindled campfire.

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When this Gospel account is shared, it’s not unusual for women in churches to identify with one or the other sister. Often there's someone who suggests all women are part-Mary, part-Martha. Maybe.

I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle-light  …

As someone named Mary, it made a kind of sense when I became friends with a workmate named Martha. I guess you could say she was my best friend over the next forty years, and it never failed to amuse us, when together, that so many people would bring up the sisters. “Who’s really Mary and who’s really Martha?” they asked in jest.

Truth is, I’m a pretty classic Martha, and my friend Martha was the emotional double of Mary of Bethany.

Yet within these different approaches to life we shared a common trait, with each other, and with the sisters of old: We all loved Jesus, and we made peace with the idea that love can just look different on different people. For some it might be making a special meal for family and a treasured friend. For others, it might be someone who stops doing tasks so that she can focus on a special guest. Martha and Mary. No wonder the church remembers these saints on their own special day.

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Mtr Mary

*Sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806-1861. Public domain.