Wendy Gigliotti
St. John Henry Newman Writing Group
We are in every parish. Every parish needs us. We see things others don’t. The spent bloom in the floral arrangement near the tabernacle. The hardened splattered wax on the candleholder standing sentinel to the altar. The unkempt hymnals and missals spilling out of their holders in the pews. Once seen, we cannot unsee them, cannot rest until things are put right. We are a silent team often working behind the scenes and between Masses making sure that all is calm and all is bright, that the sanctuary is always worship ready. We are strong at the minute detail; our challenge is keeping the big picture in focus.
Most parishes call us the Altar Society, and most of us who serve are really St. Marthas at heart.
Martha is a saint revealed to us in the Gospels of Luke and John. Along with her siblings, Mary and Lazarus, Martha lived in Bethany, a few miles from Jerusalem. She is known for sharing her gift for hospitality, generously opening her home to Jesus and others.
We first meet St. Martha tattling to Jesus about her sister, who isn’t helping her serve as she thinks she should. “But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’” (Luke 10:40–42).
For years, that was how I saw Martha, as a woman who was so busy focusing on small details that she missed the big picture entirely.
When I entered the Catholic Church through the RCIA process nearly thirty years ago, I was a young stay-at-home mom. As the patron saint of servants and cooks, St. Martha would have been a logical choice for my confirmation saint. I chose St. Mary because, given a choice between cleaning the house or sitting at Jesus’ feet, I wanted to be found at Jesus’ feet.
Much as I once hated to admit, my nature aligns more intuitively with St. Martha. I instinctively navigate toward hospitality ministries. Even when I worked with adult faith formation programs for ten years, I was behind the scenes—organizing classes, coordinating speakers, registering participants, and providing event hospitality. I was the worker bee buzzing about getting everything in place so that others could figuratively sit and learn at the feet of Jesus. And, like St. Martha, too often I fretted that others weren’t helping as I thought they should, only to catch myself and lament, “Martha, Martha!” I saw St. Martha more as an adversary than an ally.
But we encounter Martha in the Bible three times. To focus only on the first encounter is to be just as shortsighted as she was in it. Because somewhere between it and the next—the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead—Martha changed. “She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’” (John 11:27).
Clearly, she has spent time at Jesus’ feet learning who he is and what he can do.
She is still the same Martha in this second encounter, attending to the needs of others through her gift of hospitality. But now she is willing to leave them—and her own mourning—and put Jesus first when he arrives on the scene. And in this encounter, I now see not only the glory of God revealed, but the faith of a saint to be emulated.
When we last see Martha in John 12:2, she is still serving—it’s not just what she does; it is who she is. But she is no longer anxious because she now knows whom she serves. And in my coming to understand this, I too am able to see the bigger picture and find a friend in St. Martha.
So now when I slip into the church during its quiet off-hours to freshen the flowers by the altar or tidy up the chapel before adoration, I stop and take a moment to pray first. I sit quietly before the tabernacle at the feet of Jesus, sharing my heart before I apply the work of my hands. Because, after nearly thirty years of her whispering in my ear, I’m finally listening to St. Martha and her example to remember whom I serve first.