Martha & Max.

Anthony Cecil, Jr.
Sep 6, 2017
21 min read

The Artificial Question

Often times, all of us hear and ask a question that we don’t really mean, nor do we really truly answer.

“How are you?”

It’s how we greet one another…it’s what we say when we’re faced with the awkward nature of casual conversations with people we pass on the street, the cashier at the grocery store (if we have over fifteen items and can’t be our own cashier, of course), or those people who we don’t really want to be having a conversation with at the moment.

“How are you?”

“I’m good, how are you?”

And we keep on walking—both parties in the conversation. We don’t really care. We weren’t really listening. We aren’t being authentic. If we’re having an absolutely terrible day, we aren’t likely to say anything to allude to the fact, and if we’re the one initiating the “conversation”—if it can be called so—the most dreaded thing would be that anyone would answer something other than “fine” or “good,” and we’d actually have to expend interest in someone else whom we may not know or necessarily care for.

“How are you?”

This summer, I had the chance to change this for myself. I had the opportunity to stop acting and to start being more authentic with this question, and really with everything else, because I wasn’t “good” all the time. If I’m being completely honest, I’m exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Spiritually. Emotionally. Exhausted. I got tired of saying I was “good,” when I clearly wasn’t all that good all the time. (Disclaimer: this isn’t to say that I expressed my exhaustion to my patients…I’m not that dumb, people.)

For ten weeks, I interned at a Baptist hospital with a small group consisting of another Catholic seminarian, a Presbyterian seminarian, and myself. We worked with a larger group of chaplains, most coming from Baptist backgrounds. We were each assigned to our own three units, and each took turns having the experience of being on-call. I discovered that not only do pagers still exist, but they actually work, too. Between the three of us interns, we covered on-call at the hospital nearly 24/7 (reread that part about me being exhausted), and we saw a little bit of everything.

Of course, when one goes to tell stories about their summer work in a hospital, they are going to automatically reach for the more outrageous and entertaining ones over the plain, random visits that they did. This is how I’ve done it, as well—someone asks me about my time at the hospital and I share all of the craziness that happened; particularly, I share the story of my next to last weekend when over the course of two days, I spent twenty-two hours with patients and families just from being on-call. Have I said yet that I’m tired?

Visiting patients wasn’t the only thing that happened at the hospital, though. Classes were attended, friendships were made, and perhaps most importantly, growth happened. We gained confidence in our abilities as we sharpened our ministerial talents. The clearest marker of this growth was when one of my colleagues recounted a story near the end of our summer together, which involved them getting down onto the floor to comfort someone in distress—something that the same person likely wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing just weeks before.

Most importantly, though, in my opinion at least, spiritual growth happened. We had the opportunity to honor our own faith traditions while learning from the traditions of others. We took the time to sit back and reflect on where God was in all that we were experiencing—where His story and ours were meeting; and for me, at least, I grew in my relationship with two other people, and through them, closer to God. If you read the title, you already know who they are: Martha and Max—these being Saint Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus, and Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the twentieth century Polish priest who was martyred at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Doing Nothing and Looking for Jesus.

The whole idea of being a chaplain was…odd.

I’ve been in the hospital once myself, and various members of my family have been in the hospital several times for several reasons. I’d never had an extended encounter with a chaplain, and I wasn’t quite sure what they did. I even spent a year of Wednesday ministry days at school being at a hospital in preparation for this summer, but at the end of the year, I still had a hard time seeing the point of my few hours a week at the hospital. I was sure, though, that being at the hospital every day for ten weeks would probably give me a better clue.

We made it through orientation and onto our assigned units. I was assigned to two orthopedic units and one “catch all” unit that had overflow from various other parts of the hospital. I went and visited patients—some of which wanted absolutely nothing to do with me and others who caused me come up with an escape plan because they simply wouldn’t quit talking. As I was doing this, though, I still didn’t quite get it. All I was doing was sitting in their room with them. A lot of times, I felt like all that I was doing was bothering them. I know that when I’m sick, the last thing I want is for a stranger to come in my room, sit down, and try to have a conversation.

As part of our orientation, our supervisor took us to the Emergency Department and sat us down in the consultation room. She said we’d likely be spending a lot of time there helping the families who just had a loved one die. She talked about how to do crowd control, where to find cups, ice water, and gave the tip of offering blankets or cold rags to people going into shock. Once I was in my own and called into the ER, I was thankful for all of that advice—but I was still confused. A lot of times, I was just running around getting stuff for the family, and serving as a bridge between them and the nurses. Sometimes, they would ask me to pray, but other times they wouldn’t. What impact was I having?

Essentially, I found myself asking the question—where was Jesus in all of this? Is this really what he wants me to be doing? I’ve wanted for so long to walk with people in their suffering, but I didn’t really imagine that it would entail making trips back and forth to the nutrition room for ice water.

This is where I began to see the first of my friends—Martha.

Jesus, This Sucks.

It’s probably been made more than clear now that this summer was exhausting, and honestly, it sucked. On top of being tired all the time, when I was working, what I was doing was less than ideal. This isn’t to complain, its just reality.

It’s hard to hold someone’s hand and pray with them while they’re dying. It’s hard to say “I don’t know” when someone asks why God is allowing such a thing to happen. It’s hard to bring parents into a room to view the body of their son who died of a drug overdose. It’s hard to pray with a mother whose baby only has hours to live. It’s hard to hold a child’s hand and take them into a room where their mother’s lifeless body is. It’s hard to work an eight-hour day, and then get woken up again and again in the middle of the night—knowing that the pager going off means that someone is probably dead, or that there is another miscommunication about what entails an “emergency” that’s worth waking up the chaplain for.

One of my favorite quotes from a Saint comes from Alphonsus Liguori, who once said that our prayers to God should be like a conversation with our dearest and most close friend. There is of course a nuance here, in the need to recognize that God is God and we are not. Yet, God still is more close to us than any other human can possibly be. Something about friendship, and specifically about Christian friendship, is honesty—a brutal honesty—not brutal in the sense of meanness or harshness, but in the sense of a comfortability to say what’s on your heart and know that it will be heard in love.

This is where Saint Martha comes into the picture. This summer, she taught me a lot about being more a friend of the Lord, because of her honesty with the Lord. The Church, in her wisdom, gives us two options for the Gospel on the Memorial of Saint Martha, celebrated on July 29, one from John, and the other from Luke.

John’s Gospel reads:

Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother [Lazarus, who had died]. When Martha heard Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him; but Mary stayed 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 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.” (JN 11:19-27, NAB)

Martha and Mary just had a devastating experience—their brother was dead. In all of this, they wondered what most of us probably would; where is God? A little over ten years ago, when I lost my own brother, this was a question that would not leave my mind no matter what I did—where was God?

In the midst of this tragedy, with the question on her mind, Martha had the conviction to do what the Lord probably wishes that we’d do—she let him in. She let him see her brokenness, her sadness, perhaps even her anger. There are many ways one could read that line—“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Often times, when we experience the death of someone so close, our vision becomes fogged by our devastation, and we are unable to clearly see where God is—which is exactly when we need to seek him out. Saint John of the Cross described faith as walking around in the dark. So if our sadness and devastation are the dark, it is precisely then we need to call out for help from the Lord, which is what Martha did, and did such an honest, and brutally honest manner.

The other option the Church gives us comes from the Gospel according to Luke, which reads:

Jesus 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.” (LK 10:38-42 NAB)

I feel like anyone who has siblings, or has even experienced the dreaded group project in school can relate to Martha here—one person stuck doing all the work, while someone else who should be helping is sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Like a child going to their parent or their teacher, Martha comes to Jesus and tells him what’s on her mind. “Lord, this sucks—I’m doing everything and Mary’s not doing crap—tell her to get to work and help me!”

The Lord’s reply here may seem to be in stark contrast to the Gospel from John. In John’s Gospel, Martha comes to the Lord in her sorrow, her anger, her confusion and tells him what’s on her heart and he performs a miracle in raising her brother from the dead. But, here, all he does is say “well, Mary’s not doing anything wrong, because she’s chosen to be with me.” We can probably imagine Jesus being a little sassy and saying “quit complaining!” But, I don’t think that’s what he’s doing. Remember, God is God. We aren’t; and that’s a good thing.

What is different about the second Gospel, at least to me, is that Martha comes to the Lord as, like I said before, a child approaches their parent or teacher. She expresses in all honesty—in brutal honesty—what is on her heart. The Lord hears, but what she wants isn’t necessarily what’s best—her plan isn’t necessarily what his plan is. For Martha, it became an opportunity to learn both from the Lord, and from her sister, who up until then, she was disappointed in, and probably a little annoyed with.

Like Martha, I spent a lot of time this summer running around keeping myself busy. Because our number of interns was so low, time to have fun outside of the hospital wasn’t in abundance. So, I found myself spending all day, and sometimes all night as well, running around the hospital—visiting patients, writing verbatims, reading for the education part of the program, doing research, preparing presentations…the list could go on. Then, when I wasn’t in the hospital, I was trying to decompress from being at the hospital, which for me meant hanging out with friends, going to the movies, going out to eat, going to the park, walking the bridge across the river—once again, the list could go on. I would hear stories of how much fun my brother seminarians were having travelling, doing other types of ministry, growing in their pastoral identity in the parishes, and I found myself being Martha. I found myself saying, “This sucks. Look at the great things they’re all doing, and here I am, stuck in a depressing hospital doing ministry I don’t even want to be doing.” I know, I sound like a child, right? If I’m being brutally honest, though, that’s how I felt.

What Saint Martha taught me throughout the summer though, was that I needed to change how I was expressing that honesty. I was spending a lot of time talking to my friends about my experiences at the hospital, the struggles I was encountering, and all of that—but I wasn’t coming to the Lord with it. If Alphonsus Liguori is right in saying that our relationship with the Lord is the closes and most intimate that we will ever experience—if John of the Cross is right in saying that faith means walking around in the darkness, the darkness here being my frustration and my exhaustion—if honesty worked for Martha, why wasn’t I giving it a shot? What did I have to lose?

So I did it. I started being honest with the Lord about my experiences.

I have to admit, prayer this summer was difficult at times. I was faithful to the Divine Office, but my schedule didn’t allow me to attend Daily Mass very often. After coming home from the hospital, the last thing I really wanted to do was to pray. I wanted to watch something silly to get my mind off of everything that I had seen. But then, I started being honest.

As one should do when they start really anything, I started slow. Sometimes this meant that at the end of the day, when I was tired and frustrated and didn’t want to do really anything, I would tell the Lord just that. I’d come home, go to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the rectory, sit in front of the Lord and say, “Jesus, today sucked. What the hell am I doing this for?” And I’d get up and leave. Of course, this isn’t ideal. I needed to stay and listen too, which I did not too long into the process of sharing with the Lord both the good and the bad, all of the ups and all of the downs.

What I found in doing so was beautiful. I found myself deepening my relationship with the Lord, and in some ways, developing one that is probably similar to what Martha experienced.

Sometimes, I experienced the Lord as Martha did in John’s Gospel. A couple of particular instances stick out in my mind. There were several times when I encountered something totally new—those instances when no one would know what to say. Sometimes, my prayer would be, “Lord, you lead me here…give me the words that you need them to hear,” and thankfully, almost every time, the words came. There were other times when no human words could bring comfort. “Lord, you lead me here…no words I could say could possibly do any good here…wrap them in your love. Give me comfortability with this silence. Send your Holy Spirit to this place and give us the gift of your peace.” So many times, I found myself receiving hugs from crying loved ones, although I had simply sat with them and not said a single word.

There were many times this summer where I found myself praying, “Lord…seriously? I can’t do this…but if you want me to, you’re going to have to help me.” One of these instances was over a weekend, the weekend before our last week, in fact. I had worked a full week at the hospital and was on call over parts of the weekend. Between two days, I came in for almost twenty-four hours to be with patients and their families. One of these calls was likely the toughest I’d ever had. A patient had coded an unbelievable amount of times in that day alone, not even including the multiple codes from the week. The patient’s spouse asked that I come in and I ended up spending about six or seven hours with the family. By the time the patient died, there were twenty-five family members gathered together—all losing it at one time. I was the only staff member in the area in the middle of the night with twenty-five people completely freaking out. People were crying, some were heaving as if they were going to vomit, and one person even passed out, meaning that I had to get them to the Emergency Room to make sure that they were okay. That prayer echoed in my heart… “Lord, seriously? I can’t do this...but if you want me too, you’re going to have to help me.” The house manager came. She helped me get everyone together and moved into a room where they could grieve as a family that wasn’t out in the open. She helped me get blankets and cold rags and water for them. She was truly sent from the Lord to help me do what he wanted me to do.

When I got home from that call, I was totally spent. I sat in the chapel with the Lord and begged him to allow me to rest for the remainder of the night. I don’t think I had ever felt that physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually exhausted before in my entire life. I had given everything I had and didn’t think there was more for me to give. I begged the Lord…please, Lord…let me rest.

The pager went off, and I cried.

I didn’t cry because I was upset…but because I was so utterly exhausted, and the thought of having to go in once again was too much to think. “Lord, I’ll go if you need me to go…but please don’t need me to go.”

I called the hospital switchboard and got connected to the nurse who paged me.

“Hi, this is the on-call chaplain, and I received a page.” “Oh yes, I have a patient here who wants to have a chat.” “I’m happy to spend time with the patient, but this is really for emergencies only…do you feel like this is an emergency, or can I have someone stop by in the morning when the chaplains are on their normal rounds?” “Oh it’s not an emergency at all! You can have someone come by tomorrow.”

Thanks be to God. That was all I could think…and I went to bed, and the Lord allowed me to rest.

Other times, though, I experienced the Lord as Martha did in Luke’s Gospel. I came to the Lord in my honesty…I begged something of him…and he said no. These times mainly happened when I wanted to avoid an experience that was part of working in a hospital—something a chaplain very well could encounter, but I didn’t want to.

“Lord, please don’t let me have to watch someone die.” No. “Lord, please don’t let me get called in for an infant’s death.” No. “Lord, please don’t let me encounter people who won’t want me to talk to them because I’m Catholic.” No. “Lord, please don’t make me relive the pain of losing my loved ones.” No.

There were so many instances where I begged the Lord to keep me from something…and I was reminded that he is God and I am not. He said no, as he has a right to. But he didn’t say no out of a place of hatred or punishment—he said no because he had something better in mind. He said no to keeping me from seeing death because he wanted me to see the beauty of a person passing from this life into the next. He said no to keeping me from the pain of an infant death because it is indescribable, and an instrument of His needed to go, and that instrument happened to be me. He said no to keeping me from people who wouldn’t want to talk to a Catholic to teach me to love them anyways. He said no to keeping me from reliving my past pain so that he could come into my heart and heal it in a more profound way than he ever had. These weren’t realizations that came immediately…sometimes they required more honest prayer. “Lord, why did you say no? If you’re going to say no, give me the gift of understanding,” and I think he has done just that. He has taught me once again, just like he taught Martha, that in the end, he is always there, and he always has my best interest at the forefront of all he does in my life.

My Friend, Max.

When I was in college, I did a minor in German. This involved studying the language, the culture, the history…everything. Often times people questioned why I was doing it, and really, it was because I enjoyed it—is that a bad reason to do something?

A large part of our studies involved the Holocaust and the Nazi regime…mainly because that’s a pretty significant part of world history, let alone modern German history. In all of our courses, we had several projects to do throughout the semester. One semester, I did a project on resistance to the Nazi regime—both secular and religious. For the secular portion, I explained the White Rose movement, which was a non-violent ideological resistance movement started by some college students and one of their professors in Munich. Part of their story has been excellently portrayed in the film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. For the religious portion of my presentation, I kept feeling drawn to learn more about Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s story.

I knew the basics—he’s a Saint of the Church, known as the martyr of charity. He gave his life up for someone else in the Auschwitz Konzentrationslager. But, other than that, I didn’t know much. I read his story and presented on it, and ever since then, I have always felt a close connection to him. I have felt that he, like all the Saints, is a special friend, who from heaven prays for me, intercedes with the Lord on my behalf, and draws me closer to the Lord by his example and prayers.

When I started my summer internship, I (like the rest of my group, I’m presuming) looked to see when we would be finished. Monday, August 14th was to be our last day when we would come in, finish paper work, turn in our badges, and officially be done with our hospital chaplaincy for the summer. In the Church, August 14 is the feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. I didn’t see this as a coincidence at all. I knew at the beginning of the summer that the ten weeks ahead of me were going to stretch me and involve some of the most challenging things I would experience up to that point in ministry. When I saw our finish date, I immediately began to ask my Heavenly friend Max for his prayers and his assistance, and thankfully, he answered me.

As with all of the Saints, Maximilian Kolbe was a man who had a deep and profound love of the Lord, and especially a love of the Lord through his love of our Blessed Mother and all the people that he encountered. To me, Saint Maximilian is a man who was able to see the Lord so clearly, no matter the darkness that he would face—no matter his illnesses, no matter going to the far East to start a mission although he had no knowledge of the culture or language, no matter ending up in a concentration camp. He always had his gaze focused on the Lord. In the concentration camp, he was known for encouraging others—even prison guards—to maintain hope and seek out the Lord.

His profound sight of the Lord must have been what compelled him to step forward when Franciszek Gajowniczek, a fellow prisoner who was to be executed, cried out “My wife! My children!” Maximilian stepped forward to take his place. Years later, Franciszek was in Saint Peter’s Square when the man who saved his life was declared a Saint by the Catholic Church.

Saint Maximilian was profound not only in his love of the Lord and our Blessed Mother, but also in his simplicity. Many of the lessons that Fr. Maximilian would teach the young friars under his care were quite simple. One of these helped me come to an important realization this summer.

Kolbe would often teach his friars a formula: W+w=S. The capital W represents the will of God. The lowercase w represents our will. The S represents sanctity. So, for Maximilian, where our will conforms to God’s will, holiness, and ultimately, sanctity, is found.

Maximilian was known to say from a young age that his greatest goal in life was to be a Saint. This simple yet profound formula is what helped him live a life of heroic faith and virtue, and ultimately, achieve his goal. Maximilian realized that God wants our happiness, and that the ultimate happiness we could experience was to live forever with him. However, happiness doesn’t always mean getting what one wants—just as Martha didn’t get what she wanted in Luke’s Gospel. However, this also doesn’t mean that our happiness comes from doing the opposite of what we want to do—sometimes it comes from doing exactly what we want—just as with Martha, who, in John’s Gospel, had a desire that was in line with the Lord’s desire for her.

Last summer, our vocation directors asked us seminarians to consider what first drew us to the priesthood, and where we are with those things now—what our motivating factors are. For me, I have always felt a deep calling and desire to walk with people in the midst of their suffering. I have always wanted to bring the light of Christ’s presence and love into the darkness that others experience, because in the darkest parts of my life, I discovered that Christ was the only substantial and life-giving light to be found. I’ve envisioned how this would play out in different scenarios, but working in a hospital is nowhere near how I imagined or wanted to respond to this longing.

Having Saint Maximilian as a special intercessor and Heavenly friend for me this summer, I couldn’t help but think of his formula: W+w=S. Yeah, I didn’t want to or feel called to be in a hospital. But, in the moment and even more so now that I’m looking back on my summer, I believe that it is exactly where God wanted me for those ten weeks. My colleagues—who are now dear friends—and I worked so well together. We worked so well with our supervisor. There were so many times when we were completely baffled that we were the ones who were called into a situation, and how perfectly we fit into them with the background and the skills that we had. I think I speak for all of us when I say that it must have been God’s will for us to be together at the hospital for those ten weeks this summer.

Looking back, I believe this summer was an instance that fits Max’s formula. My will—my desire to walk with people in their suffering and bring them into God’s light, lined up with God’s will for my colleagues and I to gather for those ten weeks, and for me at least, I believe that I grew closer to sanctity. I gained skills that will help me in ministry for the rest of my life, I gained confidence in those skills, and arguably most importantly, I fell in love with the Lord and grew in my desire to serve him again and again. Martha didn’t get what she wanted in Luke’s Gospel—I didn’t get what I necessarily wanted here—but for both of us, the Lord had much better plans in mind.

I believe that Max’s living out of his formula so well, ultimately leading to his sanctity, could only have come from his relationship with the Lord which was more than likely defined by a brutal honesty—the likes of which we see in Saint Martha. This honesty that Maximilian had, in my opinion, enabled him to love in such a radical manner—and it taught me something about loving others as well.

As I said earlier, I believe that it was Maximilian’s profound love of others, through his deep love of God, that compelled him to step forward and offer his life in exchange for another’s. While I didn’t have to die this summer, there were some ways I had to die to self, and thankfully, Max taught me about doing it out of love for God above all else.

There were some patients and families that I found I couldn’t quit thinking about. I tried to “leave work at work,” but really, when you’re in the trenches with others in their suffering, there is no such thing. There were times I laid awake all night praying for patients and families, and I came to realize that it was because I had made a connection with them—we had encountered the Lord together, and in a way, I loved them. There were times when a family I would leave or I would leave a family and I found myself in tears for them, because, in a way, I loved them. I was drawn to stay with a family when I technically didn’t have to, or to check back on them even though I didn’t necessarily need to, because in a way, I loved them. I spent a lot of time—time that I could have used for other things—because I loved these people, and through them, loved God, just as Maximilian loved God through is teaching, his mission work, his encounters will all he met, and, ultimately, losing his life. I pray that this is a lesson that stays with me the rest of my life.

Not a Horror Story.

When I started the summer, I was nervous. I really wanted a good summer experience, but walking into this summer, I didn’t think it was possible. As is the nature when people tell stories about required but probably not so enjoyable things, I had heard my fair share of horror stories in doing the hospital chaplaincy summer. I heard of supervisors who targeted students because of their faith traditions—Catholic-hating Protestant students that wanted nothing to do with their colleagues—people on staff or within the group trying to stir the pot and create drama instead of letting the summer unfold as it was intended to unfold. Needless to say, if that was what was ahead of me, I was horrified.

Thankfully, though, my summer wasn’t a horror story. All of us worked so well together—we learned together—we prayed together—we were open with one another. We worked like a well-oiled machine. Our supervisor had our best interest in heart. I was able to come to understand, through doing what I was least interested in doing, a beautiful image of the priesthood—that when you’re people need you, you drop everything and go to them—that when people are in the trenches, you don’t stand off and preach down to them; you get down in the trenches with them, take their hand, and walk toward the light.

This summer, I deepened relationships with old friends, made new friends, and fortunately, grew closer to some heavenly friends, Martha and Max, who taught me to become a friend of the Lord by being brutally honest and vulnerable with him, by striving to love others as I love him, and by working to see his presence all around me, which naturally allowed me to grow closer to the One I was striving to see. For all of that, thanks be to God.