We have two main Gospel stories that focus on Martha and, in both, she is a woman of action. In today’s Scripture, she and her sister Mary are both distraught over their brother Lazarus’s death, but Martha is the one who goes out to meet Jesus when he arrives. In an Ignatian contemplation with this Scripture passage, I imagine that there is a tone of frustration in her voice when she tells Jesus “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But in the midst of her despair, or possible anger, she still places her trust in completely in Jesus: “even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”
Do we have the same kind of faith that Martha shows? Are we able and willing to place our trust, wholly and completely, in Jesus, no matter what we are going through at the time?
—The Jesuit Prayer team