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Description
St. Martha icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
August 30th, 2018
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

"O dearest Jesus! in our need
give to us Martha's burning heart;
they, who on earth have Martha's speed,
in Heaven shall meet with Mary's part."
~ Fr. Frederick Faber

“Jesus said to her:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life;
whoever believes in Me, even if he dies, will live,
and anyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
Do you believe this?"
She said to Him: "Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
~ John 11:25-27

This is my image of St. Martha, whom I have depicted dressed in the garb of a first-century Jewish woman in a white dress with a blue veil. I referenced the designs shown on the funerary portrait busts of wealthy women from Palmyra , in Syria for her jewelry. She holds an elegant alabaster jug (with a design inspired by one found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb) and a broom, which indicate her life of humble service.

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Martha (early first century A.D. – c. 75? A.D.), or Martha of Bethany was a Jewish woman born in the first-century A.D. in the Roman Province of Iudaea. The name “Martha” means “Mistress” in Aramaic, a name which seems to fit well as she is presented in the Gospels as a competent and capable woman who managed her household well. She lived in the village of Bethany (about 1.5 miles from Jerusalem) with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus (Eleazar). Evidently they were a relatively wealthy family, who were generous in their hospitality. They were also good friends of Jesus and were devoted disciples. As the village of Bethany was an ideal halting place for Jewish pilgrims traveling to and from Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples made use of the family’s generous hospitality in their many travels to and from the holy city.

Martha is first mentioned by name in the Gospel of Luke, where he describes one such scene: “As they continued their journey He entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed Him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at His feet listening to Him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to Him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “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 10:38-42)

It is from this passage that Martha is often represented as a symbol of the active life and Mary of the contemplative life. Commenting on this scene, Frank Sheed writes in his To Know Jesus Christ that, “We hear of only one house that Jesus was in the habit of visiting, Martha’s house in Bethany, a couple miles from Jerusalem” and “Mary had chosen the best part—not that Martha had chosen evilly, what she was doing was necessary; her error lay in thinking that the contemplation of Christ was mere idling, whereas it is the highest activity of all…Our Lord emphasizes the primacy of grace over nature: the union of the soul with God is more important than anything, literally anything, that men can do.”

Martha is again mentioned during the episode of the raising of her brother Lazarus from the dead from John 11:1-44:
“Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill. So the sisters sent word to him, saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep. So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.” So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying, “The teacher is here and is asking for you.” As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still where Martha had met him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”

So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father,I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”
Frank Sheed writes in his To Know Jesus Christ that, “it is Martha’s abiding glory that Jesus’ words, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” might never have been spoken but for her.”

Soon thereafter, John 12 tells us how Jesus again came to Bethany, and in the house of Simon the Leper, the resurrected Lazarus and his sisters were there, hosting a dinner for Him. Martha was serving them all at table while Mary “took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” And as the nearby crowds had discovered that Jesus was there, they came to see Him and also Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead. And many Jews who came there began to believe in Jesus because of that miracle. Sadly, it was because of this great witness of his resurrection that “the chief priests plotted to kill Lazarus too, because many of the Jews were turning away and believing in Jesus because of him.” (John 12:10-11) It was soon after this meal that Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and a less than a week later He was crucified and buried, but on Easter Sunday was raised from the dead.

After Jesus’ resurrection, He went to Bethany and it was outside of that village that He ascended into Heaven. According to the tradition in the West, after the Ascension, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were fervent members of the Christian community and sold much of their property and other personal possessions to care for the poor and to support the fledgling Church. After the death of Stephen and the murder of James of Zebedee, the Church faced severe persecution and the Jewish leaders attempted to kill Lazarus. Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary (along with their steward Maximin and servants Marcella, Susanne and Sidonius) fled Judea around the year 44 AD. Eventually they managed to sail to southern Gaul and there found welcome by the inhabitants. They began preaching there with great missionary zeal and converted many people. They later separated, with Lazarus becoming the bishop of Marseilles, Martha leaving for Tarascon, and Maximin and Mary traveling to Aquae Sextiae (where Maximin later became bishop). Mary Magdalene became a hermit and went off to live a life of penitence in the Sainte-Baume mountains for the next thirty years.

While in Tarascon evangelizing, Martha (according to the 13th century Golden Legend) “was right facound of speech, and courteous and gracious to the sight of the people.” There is also a legend about her in which a local monster—called the Tarasque—was terrorizing the people of Tarascon. Martha offered to vanquish the beast for them, and she fearlessly approached the beast while holding a cross and sprinkled holy water on it. Then she tied her sash around its neck and led the now-docile monster to the village, where the townspeople killed it and hailed Martha as their savior. She then preached to them and converted a number of the inhabitants to Christianity. Martha eventually died in Tarascon and was buried there with reverence. St. Martha’s Collegiate Church was built over her tomb in the 13th century, and her relics can be seen in the crypt there to this day. The Spanish town of Villajoyosa also celebrates St. Martha as their patron, as it was due to her intercession that the town was saved from roving bands of Muslim pirates led by Zalé-Arraez in 1538.

“Our Lord’s words teach us that though we labor among the many distractions of this world, we should have but one goal. For we are but travelers on a journey without as yet a fixed abode; we are on our way, not yet in our native land; we are in a state of longing, not yet of enjoyment. But let us continue on our way, and continue without sloth or respite, so that we may ultimately arrive at our destination.

Martha and Mary were sisters, related not only by blood but also by religious aspirations. They stayed close to our Lord and both served him harmoniously when he was among them. Martha welcomed him as travelers are welcomed. But in her case, the maidservant received her Lord, the invalid her Savior, the creature her Creator, to serve him bodily food while she was to be fed by the Spirit. For the Lord willed to put on the form of a slave, and under this form to be fed by his own servants, out of condescension and not out of need. For this was indeed condescension, to present himself to be fed; since he was in the flesh he would indeed be hungry and thirsty.

Thus was the Lord received as a guest who came unto his own and his own received him not; but as many as received him, he gave them the power to become sons of God, adopting those who were servants and making them his brothers, ransoming the captives and making them his co-heirs. No one of you should say: “Blessed are they who have deserved to receive Christ into their homes!” Do not grieve or complain that you were born in a time when you can no longer see God in the flesh. He did not in fact take this privilege from you. As he says: Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers, you did to me.

But you, Martha, If I may say so, are blessed for your good service, and for your labors you seek the reward of peace. Now you are much occupied in nourishing the body, admittedly a holy one. But when you come to the heavenly homeland will you find a traveler to welcome, someone hungry to feed, or thirsty to whom you may give drink, someone ill whom you could visit, or quarreling whom you could reconcile, or dead whom you could bury?

No, there will be none of these tasks there. What you will find there is what Mary chose. There we shall not feed others, we ourselves shall be fed. Thus what Mary chose in this life will be realized there in all its fullness; she was gathering fragments from that rich banquet, the Word of God. Do you wish to know what we will have there? The Lord himself tells us when he says of his servants, Amen, I say to you, he will make them recline and passing he will serve them.
- from a sermon by St. Augustine

The Feast of St. Martha is celebrated on July 29th.

St. Martha is the patron saint of home-makers, housewives, hotel-keepers, servers, maids, and cooks.

Almighty ever-living God,
whose Son was pleased to be welcomed
in Saint Martha’s house as a guest,
grant, we pray, that through her intercession,
serving Christ faithfully in our brothers and sisters,
we may merit to be received by you
in the halls of heaven.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Description
St. Martha icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
August 30th, 2018
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

"O dearest Jesus! in our need
give to us Martha's burning heart;
they, who on earth have Martha's speed,
in Heaven shall meet with Mary's part."
~ Fr. Frederick Faber

“Jesus said to her:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life;
whoever believes in Me, even if he dies, will live,
and anyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
Do you believe this?"
She said to Him: "Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
~ John 11:25-27

This is my image of St. Martha, whom I have depicted dressed in the garb of a first-century Jewish woman in a white dress with a blue veil. I referenced the designs shown on the funerary portrait busts of wealthy women from Palmyra , in Syria for her jewelry. She holds an elegant alabaster jug (with a design inspired by one found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb) and a broom, which indicate her life of humble service.

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Martha (early first century A.D. – c. 75? A.D.), or Martha of Bethany was a Jewish woman born in the first-century A.D. in the Roman Province of Iudaea. The name “Martha” means “Mistress” in Aramaic, a name which seems to fit well as she is presented in the Gospels as a competent and capable woman who managed her household well. She lived in the village of Bethany (about 1.5 miles from Jerusalem) with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus (Eleazar). Evidently they were a relatively wealthy family, who were generous in their hospitality. They were also good friends of Jesus and were devoted disciples. As the village of Bethany was an ideal halting place for Jewish pilgrims traveling to and from Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples made use of the family’s generous hospitality in their many travels to and from the holy city.

Martha is first mentioned by name in the Gospel of Luke, where he describes one such scene: “As they continued their journey He entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed Him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at His feet listening to Him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to Him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “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 10:38-42)

It is from this passage that Martha is often represented as a symbol of the active life and Mary of the contemplative life. Commenting on this scene, Frank Sheed writes in his To Know Jesus Christ that, “We hear of only one house that Jesus was in the habit of visiting, Martha’s house in Bethany, a couple miles from Jerusalem” and “Mary had chosen the best part—not that Martha had chosen evilly, what she was doing was necessary; her error lay in thinking that the contemplation of Christ was mere idling, whereas it is the highest activity of all…Our Lord emphasizes the primacy of grace over nature: the union of the soul with God is more important than anything, literally anything, that men can do.”

Martha is again mentioned during the episode of the raising of her brother Lazarus from the dead from John 11:1-44:
“Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill. So the sisters sent word to him, saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep. So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.” So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying, “The teacher is here and is asking for you.” As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still where Martha had met him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”

So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father,I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”
Frank Sheed writes in his To Know Jesus Christ that, “it is Martha’s abiding glory that Jesus’ words, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” might never have been spoken but for her.”

Soon thereafter, John 12 tells us how Jesus again came to Bethany, and in the house of Simon the Leper, the resurrected Lazarus and his sisters were there, hosting a dinner for Him. Martha was serving them all at table while Mary “took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” And as the nearby crowds had discovered that Jesus was there, they came to see Him and also Lazarus, who had been raised from the dead. And many Jews who came there began to believe in Jesus because of that miracle. Sadly, it was because of this great witness of his resurrection that “the chief priests plotted to kill Lazarus too, because many of the Jews were turning away and believing in Jesus because of him.” (John 12:10-11) It was soon after this meal that Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and a less than a week later He was crucified and buried, but on Easter Sunday was raised from the dead.

After Jesus’ resurrection, He went to Bethany and it was outside of that village that He ascended into Heaven. According to the tradition in the West, after the Ascension, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were fervent members of the Christian community and sold much of their property and other personal possessions to care for the poor and to support the fledgling Church. After the death of Stephen and the murder of James of Zebedee, the Church faced severe persecution and the Jewish leaders attempted to kill Lazarus. Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary (along with their steward Maximin and servants Marcella, Susanne and Sidonius) fled Judea around the year 44 AD. Eventually they managed to sail to southern Gaul and there found welcome by the inhabitants. They began preaching there with great missionary zeal and converted many people. They later separated, with Lazarus becoming the bishop of Marseilles, Martha leaving for Tarascon, and Maximin and Mary traveling to Aquae Sextiae (where Maximin later became bishop). Mary Magdalene became a hermit and went off to live a life of penitence in the Sainte-Baume mountains for the next thirty years.

While in Tarascon evangelizing, Martha (according to the 13th century Golden Legend) “was right facound of speech, and courteous and gracious to the sight of the people.” There is also a legend about her in which a local monster—called the Tarasque—was terrorizing the people of Tarascon. Martha offered to vanquish the beast for them, and she fearlessly approached the beast while holding a cross and sprinkled holy water on it. Then she tied her sash around its neck and led the now-docile monster to the village, where the townspeople killed it and hailed Martha as their savior. She then preached to them and converted a number of the inhabitants to Christianity. Martha eventually died in Tarascon and was buried there with reverence. St. Martha’s Collegiate Church was built over her tomb in the 13th century, and her relics can be seen in the crypt there to this day. The Spanish town of Villajoyosa also celebrates St. Martha as their patron, as it was due to her intercession that the town was saved from roving bands of Muslim pirates led by Zalé-Arraez in 1538.

“Our Lord’s words teach us that though we labor among the many distractions of this world, we should have but one goal. For we are but travelers on a journey without as yet a fixed abode; we are on our way, not yet in our native land; we are in a state of longing, not yet of enjoyment. But let us continue on our way, and continue without sloth or respite, so that we may ultimately arrive at our destination.

Martha and Mary were sisters, related not only by blood but also by religious aspirations. They stayed close to our Lord and both served him harmoniously when he was among them. Martha welcomed him as travelers are welcomed. But in her case, the maidservant received her Lord, the invalid her Savior, the creature her Creator, to serve him bodily food while she was to be fed by the Spirit. For the Lord willed to put on the form of a slave, and under this form to be fed by his own servants, out of condescension and not out of need. For this was indeed condescension, to present himself to be fed; since he was in the flesh he would indeed be hungry and thirsty.

Thus was the Lord received as a guest who came unto his own and his own received him not; but as many as received him, he gave them the power to become sons of God, adopting those who were servants and making them his brothers, ransoming the captives and making them his co-heirs. No one of you should say: “Blessed are they who have deserved to receive Christ into their homes!” Do not grieve or complain that you were born in a time when you can no longer see God in the flesh. He did not in fact take this privilege from you. As he says: Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers, you did to me.

But you, Martha, If I may say so, are blessed for your good service, and for your labors you seek the reward of peace. Now you are much occupied in nourishing the body, admittedly a holy one. But when you come to the heavenly homeland will you find a traveler to welcome, someone hungry to feed, or thirsty to whom you may give drink, someone ill whom you could visit, or quarreling whom you could reconcile, or dead whom you could bury?

No, there will be none of these tasks there. What you will find there is what Mary chose. There we shall not feed others, we ourselves shall be fed. Thus what Mary chose in this life will be realized there in all its fullness; she was gathering fragments from that rich banquet, the Word of God. Do you wish to know what we will have there? The Lord himself tells us when he says of his servants, Amen, I say to you, he will make them recline and passing he will serve them.
- from a sermon by St. Augustine

The Feast of St. Martha is celebrated on July 29th.

St. Martha is the patron saint of home-makers, housewives, hotel-keepers, servers, maids, and cooks.

Almighty ever-living God,
whose Son was pleased to be welcomed
in Saint Martha’s house as a guest,
grant, we pray, that through her intercession,
serving Christ faithfully in our brothers and sisters,
we may merit to be received by you
in the halls of heaven.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.