Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
July 17, 2016 5:00 pm · Father Dennis Riccitelli
Well if you are at all like me, you love this Gospel. You've heard it, those of us that have been around. We hear it all the time, it is a very familiar story, and it sticks with us. I think the reason the story sticks with us is because it's full of reality, it's full of emotion, it's full of just plain common sense. It's a picture you can just imagine in your mind. There's Jesus goes to the house of his friends for dinner, two sisters Martha and Mary, and as we know Martha is busy getting dinner ready, we can just imagine her doing that. In the meantime, Mary the sister is just sitting there chatting with Jesus sitting at his feet. Martha gets a little ticked off at this, she gets a little testy. She says, "Lord, here I am doing all the work, tell my sister to get up and help me a little bit." And He says, almost in exasperation, "Martha, Martha" like what's the matter with you, "Mary has chosen the better part." a little emotional exasperation from our Lord.
Most of you or many of you that know me, know that I like to tell little stories now and then. Sometimes my stories are completely true, sometimes they are just made up, and sometimes they are true and then I embellish them a little bit. Well, I'll tell you right at the outset this little story that I am about to tell you is true. There is no question about it, nothing made up. It's a story that I know very well, because it concerns me, in my own life when I was a little boy, which was quite a while ago, quite a while ago. Let's say over 50 years ago, I lived in a little town outside of Pittsburgh, called Allequippa. Lived there with my mother and father a younger brother a younger sister. Every now and then during the summer my dad would take us on a little treat, we would go on a little picnic. We would go to this place called Sandy Beach. Now why it was called Sandy Beach I have no idea because we lived as I said in Pittsburgh, we were miles from the ocean, miles from any lake with a beach or anything like that, but this was called Sandy Beach.