Howard Trust writes:
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Today, the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Holy Mother Church provides us with two meals to contemplate and a model of sacrifice.
The Introit, “I shall sacrifice to you with willing heart”, and the Collect, “Show favour … and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace”, set the theme. Abraham receives a trinity of guests and with the help in their preparation of his wife, Sarah, offers them the best he has. The guests then promise Abraham that Sarah will have a son. In the Holy Gospel today Our Lord’s meal is prepared by Martha who is distracted in doing so while her sister, Mary, sits at Our Lord’s feet “and listened to his teaching” the promise of redemption.
St Paul tells the Colossians of the importance of individual sacrifice and suffering joined to the sacrifice of Our Lord, so that our daily offerings of each day’s trials – shopping, preparing meals and mortifying our desires – will have a truly redemptive value, particularly if we put them on the paten at Holy Mass.
The Psalm promises steadfast faith to those who honour “those who fear the Lord”, to whose altar in Heaven all our offerings in the Holy Mass are, we pray, taken up. Our Lady’s whole life was offered up to Her Father, Her Spouse, the Holy Spirit, and Her Son, that is the Holy Trinity. She is our model and our guide through this life towards Heaven and the contemplation in eternity of that same Trinity.