Latest / Omnia Christus / 10/6/26 Holding Things Lightly

Transcript

10/6/26 Holding Things Lightly · Omnia Christus

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: In Japanese sword fighting, the key to fighting well is to hold the katana lightly.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: The harder you grasp the katana, the less control that you have.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's paradoxical concept, but it's true.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads to this idea that many have talked about, about holding things lightly.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: The need we have to, yes, hold things, but to hold them lightly.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't need to just hold things lightly to hold things lightly as
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: if we were sort of floating through life and never really holding on
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: to anything firmly, just as in the sword fighting technique.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: You hold the katana lightly in order to have more control,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: in order to be able to do what you want to do.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's related to the beautiful and terrifying gospel that we have today
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: of Martha and Mary.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a fan of a theory which is not exactly...
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: You might say patristic.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a theory that arose later on, and so nowadays most people discount it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: But to me it makes sense,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: at least in terms of the logic of the parable of the prodigal son,
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: even if not in terms of historical reality.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the theory is that Martha and Mary...
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: That family of Bethany is also,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: so Mary,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: who's the part of that family,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: is the same Mary, who's Mary Magdala, Mary of Magdala.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that she was,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: there seemed to be a wealthy,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: well-to-do family,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: one of the, you know, sort of rich and upstanding families of Bethany.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that Mary ran off down to Magdala, that port city, and lived a rough life there.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Until Jesus found her and touched her life and brought her back and that today
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: the gospel that we have is sort of flowing out from that experience that she had.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like I say, that kind of helps me to make sense of this.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Why does Mary get it?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Why is Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus when Martha is doing all the serving?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because Martha is sort of that classical good girl,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: does everything right,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: never did anything right,
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  SPEAKER_00: always did what the parents wanted, lived the upstanding life.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she puts her value into what she does.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: She's the older son in the parable of the prodigal son who always does what
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: the father says, would never think of going off, doing anything else.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: But yet because of that is actually farther from the heart of the father than Mary,
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: the one who left,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: the one who went away, the one who did her own thing, the black sheep.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: She knows that she can't earn the love of the Father.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: She knows that she can't earn the love of Christ.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: She knows that the love of Christ is a free, beautiful outpouring gift to her.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't take that for granted.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Martha is laboring under the illusion that she can somehow earn Christ's love,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: that she can somehow earn God's approval That her being can come from her doing.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: That if she does enough things, then she will be what God wants her to be.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a terrible illusion that we can have in our Catholic communities,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: in any Christian community,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: to put our identity into what we do and to think that, well,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: the more involved I am and the more that I do and I'm doing all of these things,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I must be becoming holy.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I must be growing closer to Christ.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there again,
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: we're reminded of those frightening words of Christ where,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: he says at the end of time,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: they will come and say, Lord, Lord, we cast out demons in your name.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: We preached in your name.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: We did mighty deeds in your name.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I tell you, I never knew you.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Depart from me, you evildoers.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were doing all of these things in Christ's name, but it was all coming from them.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't flowing from their relationship with Christ, their union with God.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Mary sees.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Mary has.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I know people who give their whole lives to serving the church who can feel
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: with Martha legitimately insulted.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on here, Christ?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing all of these things.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's wrong?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to see that Christ doesn't condemn Martha for her serving.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: He condemns her for being worried and concerned about many things.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not wrong to serve.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not wrong to do all of these things,
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: the beautiful things in the church,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: but it's wrong to put our identity into those,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: to allow ourselves to be caught up into that,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: to be worried and concerned about many things Instead of remembering the one thing
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: that matters,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: instead of holding it lightly, that's that art of holding things lightly.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Christ is inviting Martha to.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: He says,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: all of those,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: all that serving,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: all those things that you're doing,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: wonderful, good, beautiful things, hold them lightly.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do them, but do them always for me.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let all of those things flow out of your relationship with me.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Your sister, Mary, she gets it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there'll be lots of times in her life when she's going to serve,
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: but she knows what's essential.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: She knows what's at the heart of everything.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's relationship, relationship with God, relationship with others.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: From that flows out our doing.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We can never create our being by doing.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But if we have a sense of being that's rooted in God,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: then from that we can do all sorts of things.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Our life can become a flowing out because it flows from that fount, which is God.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm just giving myself,
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: like Martha,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just doing all these things from myself, I'm going to burn myself out.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have a very limited amount of what I can do.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: God is an infinite love, infinite being.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm allowing him to flow through me,
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: there's no limit to what I can do and to what I can give.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let us ask the Lord who comes to us today in this Eucharist to give us that grace,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: the grace to receive his presence and the grace to make our life like the life
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: of Mary,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: ultimately the life of Martha as well,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: who we revere as a saint into an outflowing of the love of God.