What does it take to feed 200 or so people? A big ham. Five pounds of pulled pork. Three casseroles. The equivalent of three or four fruit plates. A veggie platter. Six packages of puff pasteries, miniquiches and the like. Two or three dozen spinach balls. A lot of juice and coffee. About sixty cookies and doughnuts. Two huge vats of soup.
And a whole lot of prayers and love.
Today was the day the Anglo community sponsors the 5 a.m. novena, which means we handle the breakfast that follows. Last year, we ran out of food, and a friend and I vowed that would not happen this year, as the Filipino community does such a terrific job of feeding us all the other eight days.
Typically, another friend and I get things going in the kitchen, then join the crowd at Mass. But even though we had more help in the kitchen before Mass, it didn’t happen this year. She went into Mass, and I was planning to join her shortly thereafter. She returned as I was sticking another sheet of pastry puffs in the convection oven; a family member had just been hospitalized, and she was rushing to meet others there.
I guess I could have gone in and pulled out a few of the others who had brought food, but instead I was Martha, trotting around the kitchen, moving trays from the convection oven to the warming oven (a bit too late in the case of the ham, but it worked out all right), scoring casseroles, and the like. A parish employee I don’t see often enough came in and we got involved in a discussion about jobs and being appreciated. I popped into the sanctuary long enough to receive the Eucharist, and that was it.
Then, it was time. The massgoers descended upon the hall. Friends returned to the kitchen. An hour later, bellies and souls full, everyone was gone. We’d had enough food, with some puff pastries and doughnuts to be used tomorrow.
“You were all by yourself? You are Martha,” one friend said to me when she found out my usual kitchenmate had had to leave. I thought about it a minute. Yes, I was Martha in that I follow Christ and like my guests to feel loved and cared for, and am counting on him to heal my friend’s ailing family member. But I wasn’t Martha in the way many think of her, focusing on the kitchen instead of the guest and trashing her sister Mary for what Martha regarded as reversed priorities. But that would have taken way too long to explain at 6:30 a.m. as we refilled serving dishes. So I just smiled and said, “Yes, I am. But not so cranky, I hope.” She smiled back. “Me too.”
