What is most important? What is worth living for? What is most worthy of our time and energy? These are among the questions that God poses to us throughout our lives.
When Jesus and the Twelve show up at the house of Martha, Mary and Lazarus, Martha bustles about to show them hospitality. For her, the important thing was to be the gracious host. Not only did she want to see that they had something to eat, but she wanted to put on a feast if she could. Is it any wonder that she complained to Jesus that Mary was not helping her? But Jesus responded to her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her” (Luke 10:41-42).
For Jesus, the Gospel is more important than an impressive table. Food for the heart and mind will last long after a good meal has passed away. Will Martha stop and accept food for the spirit, or will she still be anxious about bodily food and drink? Will she realize that Jesus will still love her, even if her table is meager?
PBS commentator and New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote a book, “The Second Mountain.” He writes about how much of his life was dedicated to climbing the first mountain, the mountain of worldly success. It was all about him and meeting the goals that American society set for him. Success will make you happy. Success means acknowledgment, money and pride. But in the process of climbing that mountain, his marriage of over 20 years fell apart, their three children moved on to adulthood, and he was left lonely and over-worked. He now realizes that his goals were egocentric – selfish – and that he had missed what was most important: relationship, family, faithfulness and love. Raised as a secular Jew and agnostic, he is now attracted to Christ and is rediscovering the faith of his ancestors.
It is not about I, but about we. Living in relationship is where happiness lies. This is why God covenanted with His people and why Jesus calls us to “love one another as I have loved you.”
But a society can be just as egocentric, just as closed to the importance of relationship and love, as an individual can. Racism, the denigration of the poor, the discounting of the unborn, the recurring demonizing of the each group of immigrants and refugees – all are rejections of Jesus’ call to love our neighbor as ourselves. All lead to unhappiness, to a turning inward.
This is the lesson of the Book of Jonah, that wonderful short story that teaches a lesson, not just to the Jews of the fifth century, but to people of every time and place who are caught up in the rejection of other groups.
Jonah was a prophet who knew that God is forgiving to those who turn from their evil ways and repent. When God asked him to go to Nineveh to tell the people there that God was going to destroy them for their sins, he took a boat heading west – instead of eastward to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrians. Like most fifth-century Israelites, he hated the Assyrians for destroying the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 and sacking many cities in the southern kingdom of Judah some 20 years later. People’s hatred can last a long time. When God finally got Jonah to the shore of Nineveh with the help of a large fish, Jonah carried out the warning: “‘Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.’ …The people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.” (Jonah 3:4-5). “When God saw by their actions how they had turned from their evil way, He repented of the evil that he has threatened to do to them; He did not carry it out” (3:10). In the end, Jonah was angry with God for forgiving them. He could not let go of his people’s hatred. But God told him, “Should I not be concerned over Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left, not to mention the many cattle?” (4:11).
In other words, God has compassion for all people – even those who find it hard to know what is right and what is wrong. He calls all to repentance – Ninevite and Israelite – and to come to know that there is a God who loves all people and calls us all to repentance. To put it in Jesus’ terms: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Rejoice when they repent and come to know the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
What is most important is not worldly success, or old grudges, or even a gracious table. What is most important is to learn to love as God loves. That relationship alone will bring us the peace and the happiness that the world cannot give.
Jesuit Father John Michalowski is parochial vicar of St. Peter Church in Charlotte.