St. Martha

St. Martha is one of those saints that get a bum deal. You know, like "doubting Thomas" and Adam and Eve... saints that are mostly remembered for the dumb things they said (or did) once and not all the rest. Seriously - you complain about your sister ONCE and everyone remembers you as stick-in-the-mud-Martha...

So I thought it was really interesting when I heard once that Martha is a recognized saint, while Mary (her sister who "chose the better part") is not. Sounds weird, right? Well, even though Mary was praised by Jesus, and is, most likely, in Heaven with Him, she never came out and stated her belief in the Gospels. Martha, on the other hand, did proclaim her faith when she went out to meet Jesus when he came to rise Lazarus.

Thinking about these two helps me a couple ways:

1) as a natural invert, I find myself sitting around thinking, thinking, thinking about things (sometimes even holy things!) and never get around to acting on them. It's good to think about Charity, but if I don't get around to actually being charitable, I'm a resounding gong. I need to be more like St. Martha, don't wait around for Jesus, go out and find Him! and

2) Just because I've chosen wrong in the past, doesn't mean that I can't move past it. I mean, Martha could have wallowed in the fact that she chose the worse part and that really could have affected her relationship with Jesus. But, instead, she feels like she can still go to Him, and has confidence in Him, even when she thinks He was recklessly tardy. "If you had been here, my brother would not have died."

St. Martha, faith so strong you can chide Jesus and still end up a saint, pray for us!