Join Fr. Charlie Bouchard, OP in this Know Before You Go video for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the first reading, Abraham unknowingly offers hospitality to angels. In the Gospel, Jesus' friend Mary sits at his feet listening to his teaching, leaving her sister Martha to do the work of hospitality. Fr. Charlie uses this scene to break open the Christian understanding of the relationship between contemplation and action, showing how be all need to do both and to let each one inform the other. He also puts forth that contemplation is like offering hospitality to God within your own heart.
Timeline:
00:00 Introduction: Fr. Charlie Bouchard
00:11 Radical Hospitality in Middle Eastern Culture
00:25 Abraham’s Hospitality to Strangers
00:50 Gospel: Martha Welcomes Jesus
01:12 Jesus Affirms Mary’s Contemplation
01:36 Active vs. Contemplative Life
02:11 Thomas Merton on the Power of Contemplation
02:44 How Action Can Lead to Reflection
03:10 Hospitality to the Word of God
03:38 Letting the Word Bear Fruit in Us