Choosing the Better Part

 The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today, Memorial of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, challenge us to contemplate the meaning of Jesus as the resurrection and the life to our journey today.

Contemplate our Action

The Reading from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah proclaims Jeremiah’s Complaint

i. [15:10] Jer 20:14.

l. [15:17] Ps 25:4.

m. [15:18] Jer 14:19; 30:15.

n. [15:20] Jer 1:18; 6:27. (Jeremiah, CHAPTER 15 | USCCB, n.d.)

Psalm 59 presents a prayer for vindication.

* [Psalm 59] A lament in two parts (Ps 59:2–9, 11b–17), each ending in a refrain (Ps 59:10, 18). Both parts alternate prayer for vindication (Ps 59:2–3, 4b–5, 11b–14) with vivid depictions of the psalmist’s enemies (Ps 59:4–5a, 7–8, 15–16). The near curse in Ps 59:12–13 is not a crude desire for revenge but a wish that God’s just rule over human affairs be recognized now. (Psalms, PSALM 59 | USCCB, n.d.)

The Gospel of John begins the presentation of the narrative of the raising of Lazarus.

* [11:1–44] The raising of Lazarus, the longest continuous narrative in John outside of the passion account, is the climax of the signs. It leads directly to the decision of the Sanhedrin to kill Jesus. The theme of life predominates. Lazarus is a token of the real life that Jesus dead and raised will give to all who believe in him. Johannine irony is found in the fact that Jesus’ gift of life leads to his own death. The story is not found in the synoptics, but cf. Mk 5:21 and parallels; Lk 7:11–17. There are also parallels between this story and Luke’s parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Lk 16:19–31). In both a man named Lazarus dies; in Luke, there is a request that he return to convince his contemporaries of the need for faith and repentance, while in John, Lazarus does return and some believe but others do not. (John, CHAPTER 11 | USCCB, n.d.)

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus proclaims the faith of Martha and Mary

* [10:38–42] The story of Martha and Mary further illustrates the importance of hearing the words of the teacher and the concern with women in Luke.

* [10:39] Sat beside the Lord at his feet: it is remarkable for first-century Palestinian Judaism that a woman would assume the posture of a disciple at the master’s feet (see also Lk 8:35; Acts 22:3), and it reveals a characteristic attitude of Jesus toward women in this gospel (see Lk 8:2–3).

* [10:42] There is need of only one thing: some ancient versions read, “there is need of few things”; another important, although probably inferior, reading found in some manuscripts is, “there is need of few things, or of one.” (Luke, CHAPTER 10 | USCCB, n.d.)

Gladyce Janky that in the Ignatian tradition, Jesus’ words to Martha are at the heart of the Principle and Foundation: we are created to praise, reverence, and serve God, and everything else in our lives exists to help us toward that end.

When responsibilities, fears, or other distractions begin to pull us away from that purpose, Ignatius calls these disordered attachments—not “bad things,” but good things that have taken precedence over our relationship with God. Martha’s anxiety is not a failure to live up to Jesus’ expectations; it is the human experience of what happens when we overextend ourselves, or we become discouraged and feel hopeless as we witness the injustices of this world. Jesus’ gentle naming of her negative emotions is an invitation to seek interior freedom and ask for the grace to let go of what drains life. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “Release your grip on your worries and concerns. You do not need to control outcomes. You have only one responsibility. That is, to hold everything lightly so there is room in your heart to trust me. Recall that everything in existence is already in my Father’s loving hands.” (Janky, n.d.)

Don Schwager quotes The Body of Christ needs hearers and doers of the Word, by Ambrose of Milan, 339-397 A.D.

"'Virtue does not have a single form. In the example of Martha and Mary, there is added the busy devotion of the one and the pious attention of the other to the Word of God, which, if it agrees with faith, is preferred even to the very works, as it is written: 'Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.' So let us also strive to have what no one can take away from us, so that not careless but diligent hearing may be granted to us. For even the seeds of the heavenly Word itself are likely to be taken away if they are sowed by the wayside (Luke 8:5,12). Let the desire for wisdom lead you as it did Mary. It is a greater and more perfect work. Do not let service divert the knowledge of the heavenly Word... Nor is Martha rebuked in her good serving, but Mary is preferred because she has chosen the better part for herself, for Jesus abounds with many blessings and bestows many gifts. And therefore the wiser chooses what she perceives as foremost."(excerpt from EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF LUKE 7.83-86) (Schwager, n.d.)

Friar Jude Winkler reflects that Jeremiah was called to be a prophet when young and to condemn the infidelity of the people who blamed him for their trouble and he felt abandoned by God. He calls God to task as he couldn’t hold God’s words within yet he gets rejected. God replies not one can defeat you, God will always be there. Like in revelation we are killed but we never will be harmed. The Gospel of John presents the story of Martha meeting Jesus and commenting “Lord my brother would not have died”  This was a rebuke of Jesus' delay and set the stage as Lazarus would be raised to present the miracle of life giving and pulling back faith like ours. Jesus proclaims “I am the resurrection and the life.” Know Jesus and know the full life in a realized eschatology often expressed in this Gospel. Heaven is dawning upon the earth and how much we love is the measure. Martha proclaims that faith Jesus is the Messiah. Friar Jude notes that in the Gospel of John women are often exemplars of faith.

The Word Among Us Meditation on John 11:19-27 comments that family life is not always picture-perfect, but if everyone tries to come together in faith, despite their differences, each member can grow in love, both for the Lord and for each other. We know that sometimes it is hard to get all family members to work together, but God can take even the most halting effort and bless it.

Let’s take today’s feast as an opportunity to pray for all families, including our own. May we all take strides to grow closer to each other. May we all take strides to grow closer to the Lord together. And most important, may we all welcome Jesus into our homes and invite him to live with us, just as Martha, Mary, and Lazarus did.

“Lord, be with every family, and help them embrace their calling!” (Meditation on John 11:19-27, n.d.)

Father Richard Rohr, OFM, introduces Dr. Richard Beck who acknowledges the temptation to oversimplify our reading of the Bible, but urges us to stay with the tensions it raises.

Let me suggest we emulate how Jesus read the Bible. Let’s imitate how he resolved the tensions in the Old Testament.

For example, the debates between Jesus and the Pharisees concerned the tensions … between the Torah and the prophets. You see this especially in Jesus’s Sabbath observance and his welcoming of sinners. Over and over again in­ these cases, the Pharisees pick Leviticus over the prophets. Ritual purity was chosen over ­human compassion. Jesus, by contrast, privileges the prophets. For Jesus, alleviating human suffering takes priority over Levitical prohibition. Overcoming social marginalization is preferred to religious purity. (Rohr, n.d.)

We implore the Spirit to foster a practice of encounter with the Word of God that guides us to choose the better part as we seek to live out our Baptismal anointing as priest, prophet, and leader.

References

Janky, G. (n.d.). Daily Reflection July 29, 2026 | Creighton Online Ministries. Creighton Online Ministries. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://onlineministries.creighton.edu/daily-reflections/daily-reflection-july-29-2026 

Jeremiah, CHAPTER 15 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Bible Readings, Audio and Video Every Morning | USCCB. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/jeremiah/15?10 

John, CHAPTER 11 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Readings. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/11? 

Luke, CHAPTER 10 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Bible Readings, Audio and Video Every Morning | USCCB. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/10?38 

Meditation on John 11:19-27. (n.d.). Word Among Us. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://wau.org/meditations/2026/07/29/1634783/ 

Psalms, PSALM 59 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Bible Readings, Audio and Video Every Morning | USCCB. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/59?2 

Rohr, R. (n.d.). Daily Meditations — Center for Action and Contemplation. Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved July 29, 2026, fromhttps://cac.org/daily-meditations/choosing-mercy-not-sacrifice/ 

Schwager, D. (n.d.). You Are Anxious - One Thing Is Needful. Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations – Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved July 29, 2026, from https://www.dailyscripture.net/daily-meditation/ 

Living Learning and Love

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today, Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, invite us to contemplate the power of love to make visible in our material life the mystical Presence of Love Incarnate.

Love and Life

The Reading from the Song of Songs presents the deep emotional love connected to Loss and Discovery.

* [3:1–5] See the parallel in 5:2–8.

* [3:2] The motif of seeking/finding here and elsewhere is used by later Christian and Jewish mystics to speak of the soul’s search for the divine.

* [3:4] Whom my soul loves: the fourfold repetition of this phrase in vv. 1–4 highlights the depth of the woman’s emotion and desire. Mother’s house: cf. 8:2; a place of safety and intimacy, one which implicitly signifies approval of the lovers’ relationship. (Song of Songs, CHAPTER 3 | USCCB, n.d.)

The Reading from the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians presents our life as a new creation.

* [5:14–15] These verses echo 2 Cor 4:14 and resume the treatment of “life despite death” from 2 Cor 4:7–5:10.

* [5:16–17] Consequently: the death of Christ described in 2 Cor 5:14–15 produces a whole new order (2 Cor 5:17) and a new mode of perception (2 Cor 5:16). According to the flesh: the natural mode of perception, characterized as “fleshly,” is replaced by a mode of perception proper to the Spirit. Elsewhere Paul contrasts what Christ looks like according to the old criteria (weakness, powerlessness, folly, death) and according to the new (wisdom, power, life); cf. 2 Cor 5:15, 21; 1 Cor 1:17–3:3. Similarly, he describes the paradoxical nature of Christian existence, e.g., in 2 Cor 4:10–11, 14. A new creation: rabbis used this expression to describe the effect of the entrance of a proselyte or convert into Judaism or of the remission of sins on the Day of Atonement. The new order created in Christ is the new covenant (2 Cor 3:6). (2 Corinthians, CHAPTER 5 | USCCB, n.d.)

Psalm 63 expresses the intimate relationship between God and the worshiper.

* [Psalm 63] A Psalm expressing the intimate relationship between God and the worshiper. Separated from God (Ps 63:2), the psalmist longs for the divine life given in the Temple (Ps 63:3–6), which is based on a close relationship with God (Ps 63:7–9). May all my enemies be destroyed and God’s true worshipers continue in giving praise (Ps 63:10–11)!

* [63:4] For your love is better than life: only here in the Old Testament is anything prized above life—in this case God’s love. (Psalm 63, PSALMS | USCCB, n.d.)

The Gospel of John presents The Empty Tomb and The Appearance to Mary of Magdala.

* [20:11–18] This appearance to Mary is found only in John, but cf. Mt 28:8–10 and Mk 16:9–11.

* [20:16] Rabbouni: Hebrew or Aramaic for “my master.”

* [20:17] Stop holding on to me: see Mt 28:9, where the women take hold of his feet. I have not yet ascended: for John and many of the New Testament writers, the ascension in the theological sense of going to the Father to be glorified took place with the resurrection as one action. This scene in John dramatizes such an understanding, for by Easter night Jesus is glorified and can give the Spirit. Therefore his ascension takes place immediately after he has talked to Mary. In such a view, the ascension after forty days described in Acts 1:1–11 would be simply a termination of earthly appearances or, perhaps better, an introduction to the conferral of the Spirit upon the early church, modeled on Elisha’s being able to have a (double) share in the spirit of Elijah if he saw him being taken up (same verb as ascending) into heaven (2 Kgs 2:9–12). To my Father and your Father, to my God and your God: this echoes Ru 1:16: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The Father of Jesus will now become the Father of the disciples because, once ascended, Jesus can give them the Spirit that comes from the Father and they can be reborn as God’s children (Jn 3:5). That is why he calls them my brothers. (John, CHAPTER 20 | USCCB, n.d.)

Kathy Kemler asks How does the resurrected Jesus call you?  What is the name (method/manner) that He speaks to you in that you immediately recognize it as the voice of God? And how do you remain open so that you may understand and respond with the awareness that he is “Teacher”. 

This part of today’s Gospel touched me because sometimes I too don’t recognize Jesus in the moment, or in a situation. And somehow as if in the gentle calling of my name he brings my awareness to, “that which is”.  Recently I was struggling with a situation that had occurred. I was “underwater” as I would call it, distressed about the situation, fumbling around and living in the muck, in the darkness.  One morning during this floundering, I was reading a devotional reflection and suddenly, it was as if Jesus called me by name and shined a bright light of awareness onto my situation, my internal disposition.  He was calling to my attention to, “what is”.  I had been focused on begrudging the situation rather than embracing and accepting the reality of the situation and what I could learn from it. It was if he called my name to bring to my attention the opportunity to learn, grow, and be transformed through the situation.  I too could have spoken in that moment, “Teacher” because I had a great sense of learning and understanding of myself. (Kemler, n.d.)

Don Schwager quotes “The love of Christ enflamed her,” by Gregory the Great (540-604 AD)

"Mary Magdalene, who had been a sinner in the city (Luke 7:37), loved the Truth and so washed away with her tears the stains of wickedness (Luke 7:47). Her sins had kept her cold, but afterward she burned with an irresistible love... We must consider this woman's state of mind whose great force of love inflamed her. When even the disciples departed from the sepulcher, she did not depart. She looked for him whom she had not found... But it is not enough for a lover to have looked once, because the force of love intensifies the effort of the search. She looked for him a first time and found nothing. She persevered in seeking, and that is why she found him. As her unfulfilled desires increased, they took possession of what they found (Song of Songs 3:1-4)... Holy desires, as I have told you before, increase by delay in their fulfillment. If delay causes them to fail, they were not desires... This was Mary's kind of love as she turned a second time to the sepulcher she had already looked into. Let us see the result of her search, which had been redoubled by the power of love." (excerpt from FORTY GOSPEL HOMILIES 25) (Schwager, n.d.)

Friar Jude Winkler reflects on some of the many connections in the Scriptures today that are not immediately obvious in the texts. The Second Letter to the Corinthians reminds us that we are not to judge according to the flesh. All people are to be treated as God’s children. Others are the new creation in love, too. In the Gospel of John Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb on the first day at about dawn when the disk of the sun is not yet visible. Friar Jude explains the connection of “the Morning Star, Venus, the Goddess of love. He notes the different number of people who go to the tomb in the Gospel accounts. Mary Magdalene represents the Church looking for her beloved. Hebrew Law required two to give witness and the requirement was met by the two angels. Mary Magdalene is “the apostle to the apostles” (apostle :one who gives witness to the resurrection). As in the Song of Songs, Mary Magdalene is searching compelled by love and Jesus is not recognized in His Resurrected Body but by His calling her name. Friar Jude notes that this is one of three episodes in the Gospel where He is not immediately recognized. Our resurrected body will not be the same but changed. When Jesus calls Mary’s name, we learn “the sheep recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd”. Friar Jude observes the instruction of Jesus not to embrace the Glorified Body and challenges us to ask ourselves when we try to cling, is it love or control?

The Word Among Us Meditation on the Song of Songs 3:1-4 comments that After Jesus’ death, when most of the other disciples hid in fear, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb as soon as she could. And while she may have been afraid, something compelled her to go find him. The love that had transformed her life propelled her to follow Jesus even into the most uncomfortable, dangerous places. As a result, she became the first witness to the risen Christ and the first one to proclaim, “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18)!

You may not have experienced anything quite as dramatic as having seven demons cast out of you, but perhaps you can think of some sin that used to keep you bound that you no longer struggle with. Or perhaps your life was headed in one direction and took a very different turn after you met Jesus. Praise God for all those miracles! And if there’s a part of you that needs more of his love and power, invite him in. Let him keep transforming you.

“Jesus, you are the One whom my heart loves.” (Meditation on the Song of Songs 3:1-4, n.d.)

Father Richard Rohr, OFM, introduces Dr. Lerita Coleman Brown (1953–2025) who reflects on the legacy of Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899–1981) and the wisdom he continues to offer us today. The interfaith minister and author Liza J. Rankow describes Thurman’s work and witness.

There is a stereotype of mystics seeking to escape the world, concerned only with the ecstasy of their own experience of union with the Divine; yet in that union is a doorway that opens out into everything and everyone. The experience of oneness brings us back into relationship with the allness. The oneness and the allness inter-be…. Thus we feel deeply the wounds of a battered world, and the suffering and the needs of the people—including, as Thurman puts it in Jesus and the Disinherited, those “with their backs against the wall”—the disenfranchised, the marginalized and the oppressed. Inaction is not an option. The mystic worldview creates an ethical mandate, and it offers a new way to enter the world of social transformation—from the position of oneness rather than dualism. It shifts the paradigm…. Thurman often quoted social union leader Eugene Debs: “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” [3]

Thurman spoke of spiritual disciplines as those practices by which we remove the barriers to our “inner altar”—our place of communion with God. And through this definition, he included activism as a spiritual discipline…. He affirmed the necessity to identify with, and work for the liberation and reconciliation of all parties in order to restore beloved community. [4] (Rohr, n.d.)

We contemplate the events in our lives when the Spirit reveals that we have been “called by name” to understand relationships in a new Way that reveals our growth through Love. 

References

John, CHAPTER 20 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Readings. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/20? 

Kemler, K. (n.d.). Daily Reflections. Daily Reflections. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://onlineministries.creighton.edu/daily-reflections/daily-reflection-july-22-2026 

Meditation on the Song of Songs 3:1-4. (n.d.). Word Among Us. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://wau.org/meditations/2026/07/22/1628315/ 

Psalm 63, PSALMS | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Readings. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/63?2 

Rohr, R. (n.d.). Howard Thurman: A Worldview of Oneness. Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://cac.org/daily-meditations/howard-thurman-a-worldview-of-oneness/ 

Schwager, D. (n.d.). I Have Seen the Lord! Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations – Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://www.dailyscripture.net/daily-meditation/ 

Song of Songs, CHAPTER 3 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Readings. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/songofsongs/3? 

2 Corinthians, CHAPTER 5 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Readings. Retrieved July 22, 2026, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/2corinthians/5?14