Martha and the Pharisee

We learn little by little, and God graciously works with our ways

Lately I’ve been pondering the doctrine of the Five Solas of the Reformation, and yes, I suspect it is a doctrine, however ironic that may seem and actually be, given the other Sola, the one about Scripture.

According to Matthew Barrett of the Gospel Coalition, “The five solas form the nucleus of the evangelical faith.” A Magisterium, as it were, based on something like a Tradition — “These five statements of the evangelical faith lay at the center of what distinguished the theology of the Reformation from the theology of the Roman Catholic church in the 16th century.”

One tenet is Sola Gratia, that “proclaims that all of our salvation, from beginning to end, is by grace and grace alone.” I can’t prosecute the matter here (or anywhere else! I’m not a theologian or even a historian), but I had a thought on the matter, arising from yesterday’s Gospel — The Pharisee and the Publican — and today’s feast — St. Martha — in the calendar of the Traditional Latin Mass, of course, not the new one.

Yesterday in the Novus Ordo calendar, the Gospel was the Loaves and the Fishes from the Gospel of John and today is the feast of Sts. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.

And it’s that change that had me pondering….

I lived my whole Catholic life (from the time I entered the Church at age 19) being docile to the calendar. Like most ordinary Catholics, I thought (when I thought about it) the calendar was a given, and insofar as it differed from the “old one” it was a matter of adding new saints. Only grumpy intransigents wouldn’t want to move on, right? What could be wrong with new saints? I knew nothing of the intricacies of the traditional calendar until I started reading Peter Kwasniewski’s works (nor did I know there is room for new saints in it).

It happened that yesterday we went to the Traditional Latin Mass (we usually go to our very reverent Novus Ordo Mass where we sing in the Schola — chant and polyphony! — it’s complicated).

Our grandson was receiving his First Holy Communion and our “out-law” (brother of our daughter’s husband), an Institute of Christ the King Canon, was celebrating.

I have now heard several sermons from him on the occasion of First Holy Communions, as the extended family tends to save them up for his visits, and they always edify. I always come away with a sense of wanting to deepen my own Communions, and I can’t say that most homilies preached on these occasions have that effect, centering as they often do on the specialness of the little communicants and the splendor of their attire, etc etc.

Anyway, Canon began by saying that the Gospel is one of the easier ones to preach on. “We know which team we are on.” If we want to be exalted, that is! We look down, so to speak, on the Pharisee, which, as he pointed out with a touch of humor, does catch us in a bit of a contradiction.

It’s not the works of the Pharisee, nor his acts of penitence, that constitute his pride, nor is it the lack of works of the Publican that constitute his humility. There might be something in each for us to imitate; and yet, it’s the Publican, we are inerrantly told, who was justified.

Today we went as usual to the also reverent Novus Ordo daily Mass at the Abbey nearby; there, as I said, it is the commemoration of Sts. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. And then I came home and I read Peter Kwasniewski’s Substack about today’s Traditional feast of St. Martha, “Thoughts on a feastday that has seen a lot of redaction.”

I encourage you to read it. He brings out the way the context of the old orations sheds light on the hidden meaning of what can seem to puzzle us:

He does not deny that she is serving Him; there is no hint that He rejects Her service, fails to appreciate it with consummate courtesy, or considers her requests to be groundless. Yet, exercising a divine freedom that turns our earthly logic upside-down, He points out a higher way that she, too, should endeavor to follow as she can, even if it means letting some vegetables stay unchopped or some meat untenderized.

We might even put the words of St. Paul, from the day’s Epistle, into the Lord’s own mouth:

Would to God you could bear with some little of my folly, but do bear with me: for I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God. For I have espoused you to one husband. (2 Cor. 11:1–2)

Are works bad? Can it be less than perfect for us to love our neighbor as ourselves — to fulfill the Great Commandment? Is Our Lord really displeased with the Pharisee, who seems to have done what was required?

Well, as Canon said, we know whose team we are on in that Gospel. But Martha is a little trickier, we might think. Dr. Kwasniewski says,

These words have never ceased to provoke disquiet, self-examination, even annoyance from those of us who are much more inclined to act and feel like Martha, and much less inclined to go all in with Mary, “just sitting there and doing nothing,” as we might be tempted to think.

The two days in juxtaposition — Sunday’s Pharisee/Publican dichotomy and today’s Martha/Mary one — read back-to-back, highlight the allegorical meaning: the two sides of our nature, represented by the characters, respectively, and the interior struggle each of us undergoes.

They certainly seem to deal with the same issue, don’t they? Read one day after the other, the problem suddenly becomes clear.

And that problem is the one Protestants call Sola Gratia. As with all of the Solas, the Catholic Church actually does offer the consummate answer and sometimes agreement with the true meaning, with a perspective that works on us as a hidden leaven, freeing us from pitting good things against each other. Grace is what saves.

However, the changes in the calendar obscure the lesson, which is taught by degrees, day after day, in a way that works with our stubborn nature.

As Dr. Kwasniewski says, the orations of the new feast subtly shift the emphasis to doing rather than being, merely asking that somehow our doing may be purified. “There is nothing false in these prayers, just as there is nothing false about a sincere ministry of hospitality. But do they not put the emphasis in the wrong place…”

As he puts it,

He knows, better than we do, that our “active participation” is usually mostly activity and very little participation, and that we need to learn to be receptive, since this is the creature’s highest activity with regard to the divine and the supernatural. As St. Dionysius the Areopagite says, the true lover of God is the one who suffers divine things in the darkness of faith and the ardor of love — not the one who tries to act toward them or comprehend them with reason.

So in addition to all of Peter’s great observations in that piece, on the changes made to this day, I would add (but remember, I am learning the skill of making these connections from him!) that meddling with the calendar’s procession from one day to the next, if we go by yesterday and today, is also not an improvement. It’s even possible that it wrongly confirms a fear of Protestants that we really do favor works over grace…

Here’s our own irony: the changes to the Mass were thought to open up the Church to others not in the fold, and yet truths are not made more clear. There are riches in the old ways and perhaps we would do well to recover them.