Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 20, 2025

2025 Jul 20 SUN: SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Gn 18: 1-10a/ Ps 15: 2-3. 3-4. 5 (1a)/ Col 1: 24-28/ Lk 10: 38-42

We may have been confused last week by some words of St. Paul in this letter to the Colossians, and today he provides us with another puzzle.

He says, "In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church." And we have to ask, what could that possibly mean?

We understand and we teach consistently that the suffering, the passion of Jesus, His death, His resurrection, these things are sufficient for our salvation, that free gift we often talk about.

So what could Paul mean by this? It seems that he is thinking about the growth of the Church, and feeling a sense of solidarity, we might say, with all the people who will come into the Church, the People of God. As he makes his way around various communities along the Mediterranean Sea, he witnesses growth, and he knows that sufferings will have to take place as a result of this growth.

And we turn to the first reading today, and we have a demonstration of a quality to be expected in that world at that time. The quality -- the virtue -- of hospitality.

And we find this to be a somewhat strange story, because it's kind of disjointed. First it says that Abraham met the Lord, and then it says that there are three men before Abraham.

So this is rather confusing. As Christians, we have tended to look back on this incident of Genesis chapter 18, and we see here a foreshadowing of the revelation of God as Trinity, one God, three persons. And of course the Trinity was not revealed until the time of Jesus. So that is a thing that we as Christians can do when we reflect on the Old Testament, that there are things there that are pointing to the Christian revelation.

And so Abraham and Sarah exercise hospitality. Their world was a bit different from ours. And we can reflect and realize that you and I have time itself sort of chopped up into little pieces, because we are going here and there and meeting social responsibilities of various kinds.

Abraham's world was not like that. They had the time to pay attention to somebody who would just show up. They had traveled long distances themselves, and they knew that there were very, very few stops along the way for refreshment. 

So they exercised hospitality, and then comes the message: "By about this time next year, Sarah will have a son." And if we go on further in chapter 18 of Genesis, we find out that Sarah is listening and she's laughing. And later Abraham said, "You were laughing." And she replies, "No, I wasn't." So it's quite a thing, and an obvious thing to laugh about if you are past childbearing. But yes, they had their son, Isaac, and that name comes from a root meaning laughter. 

Hospitality is at work in the Gospel as well. And this time, Martha, the one offering the hospitality, is consumed with anger, not anger, with anxiety. Yeah, there's anger mixed in there too, definitely, as she thinks that Mary ought to be helping her. But what prevails in Martha is anxiety. And Jesus speaks to calm her.

"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things. Only one thing is needed, and Mary has opened herself to that one thing necessary."

Every one of us knows that we have a lot of anxiety. This is kind of well an unorganized feeling, you might say. We know that we believe that much is expected from us, and we go about meeting various obligations, and we wonder whether we have met them all.

And so, like Martha, we can be filled with anxiety. I know I have been in such circumstances, and there is no contrast like the contrast between anxiety and peace.

And we know that our God wants peace for every one of us. And so, with Martha, we trust, we learn to know what really matters, what things are peripheral, so we can settle ourselves in great peace.

Remembering that we can have this gift because God does care for us as Jesus expressed it to Martha. You are anxious and worried about many things, and all you need is my peace.